Sailboat renovation

Repair plastic cracks with fiberglass and polyester

January 30, 2019 /

September 2018

When the plastic cracks had become dry enough it was time to continue the plastic repairs. We repaired the plastic cracks with fiberglass and polyester. The hull of Anne-Mon is made of a sandwich material which is reinforced with fiberglass, so for us it was a pretty easy choice to continue working with fiberglass. We chose polyester because since it is harder to paint on top of epoxy.

Cutting the fiberglass to the right size.
This corner in the cockpit was pretty weak. We decided to add some layers of fiberglass  and polyester in the corner (and some other places) to make it stronger. First we put some polyester on the corner. We added a thick layer so that the fiberglass would be able to suck it all up.
After we had added the layer of polyester we put on the first layer of fiberglass. We used a roller to make sure we got polyester all over the fiberglass, and so that we could push all air out, so that there wouldn’t be bubbles of air in the plastic later.
There were some other places that needed some reinforcement as well. Same procedure here, a thick layer of polyester and carefully pushing all air out.
The we added some spackle on the cracks in the seats, which we had grounded. The spackle is made of polyester mixed with talc. They where now dry and we wanted to close them as soon as possible.
There used to be a window here at the wall next to the door. The previous owner had removed it and covered the hole. We wanted to add some extra polyester and fiberglass to make sure it is strong enough.
At last we put some fiberglass on the seats.

If you want to read more about all the other work we do with  renovating our sailboat, you can read more about it under Renovation.

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