Gel Coat Fix/Repair The Sunfish Deck

Well, I finally took the plunge and refinished the portion of the deck that was damaged. I have never worked with gel coat, but the repair went smoothly enough. I used a large portion of the can of paste to spread over the repair, and a large amount of hardener.

I was all set to add the proper amount of hardener, when I squeezed the bottle of hardener too aggressively, and it squirted into my yellow gel coat mix. After that I had to eyeball it (which is not recommended). My thinking was that if I used 3/4 of the can of gel coat, then I should use 3/4 of the bottle of hardener. The mix worked, and it started to harden within the hour. I guess I was lucky.

I started to use the gel coat paste right away after I added the hardener, the consistency was like cake icing. As it started to harden, it came more like peanut butter.

In the end I think I slathered on too much gel coat. I started to wet sand the repair to make it flush with the deck, but I was getting no where. This weekend, I am going to dry sand the repair with a palm sander - 180 grit paper, make it flush, and then wet sand.

After that, I am going to compound the repair, and wax. After that we will see how detectable the repair is. I am not too concerned how perfect the repair is, I just wanted a strong repair. The previous owner spilled something that had burned right through to the gel coat. This would have caused water to be absorbed and would have weakened the area over time. The previous owner slapped on some paint to fix the job. However, I wanted to go one step further and repair it properly.

There was also a small chipped area in the mast tube that I fixed. I will have to sand that area as well. Here are the before and after photos. I know it doesn't look pretty now, but with some sanding, compounding, and waxing, it might look a whole lot better. The chalkiness of the gel coat is just due to the run off of the sanding.