Gelcoat crack by ubolt for the winch, argghh!

[jmo]

Hey guys,

So when I pulled the boat out of the water this morning I noticed the gelcoat has a crack/flake developed right at the upper part of where the u bolt is for clipping the winch to. It appears to be flaking off as opposed to a crack all the through, it's about 3/8" of an inch long, any suggestions on how to fix it myself? Can I get some epoxy or glue and just adhere it back on?

I'll try a post a picture of it.

Thanks,

Jmo

[jmo]

The images are rotated 90 degrees...

[bj25430]

did you by accident load the boat up a little fast and hit that hook? looks like the bottom plate of that hook show a little bend in it. I have used the gel coat repair kit that i bought online through like amazon and repaired some serious scrapes when one of my bunk boards was rotted out and i didn't realize it, and the support went through the carpet and had dinner on my gel coat.. OUCH. it worked good, im just no pro at gel coat but it filled it in. You may try that to dr that up a little bit.

[jmo]

No, never hit anything - I never power load, I guide it and winch it the rest of the way. I'm constantly launching and retrieving it as I don't live on a lake, so I think the gelcoat just gets flexed from that and it eventually cracked a bit.

I bought some marine sealer/epoxy that seems to have done the trick.

[SkiTower]

do you cinch the secondary strap as tight as you can (not the winch)? If it's too tight and the boat settles it can put too much load on the u-bolt. Unfortunately, it looks like you have more of a problem than just cosmetics. Make sure the bolt is still fastened solid.

[BT]

If it's not impact damage, the nut that secures the u bolt could have been over torqued some how. That is the only other way I could imagine the metal plate behind it bending like that. It is going to take more than gluing the "flaking off" part back on. The u bolt and plate need to come off, grind off the damaged gel, repair and polish. Not a huge deal, but if you never have done gelcoat repair and are particular about your boat, you may want to get a professional involved. If you do it yourself I would order the gelcoat from correct craft or from somewhere that knows the exact color of you hull. It is hard to mix the color yourself and get it right.

[jmo]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the additional thoughts:

SkiTower - when I take the boat out I tighten both the winch strap and the turn buckle just enough to take the slack out, I definitely don't crank it super tight. Now that I look at it again it seems the crack is due to "compression" on the plate. The ubolt itself still feels completely bomb proof. I pulled up the front cushion and the triangular carpeted panel under it to see if I could inspect where the ubolt attaches, but all I see is this long black metal bar with 2 screws in it, does the ubolt bolt onto this plate from the outside?

BT - yeah, I agree I probably need to fix the gelcoat properly, I was hoping the patch holds me until after I go away on vacation for two weeks, since its below the water line I wanted to make sure water isn't seeping in between the gelcoat and the fiberglass and making things worse.

Its possible it was impact damage as I am the second owner, so maybe it happened to the previous owner, or there was the one time my wife almost killed me by giving it forward thrust (instead of reversing it) while trying to load the boat onto the trailer on a windy day (a story for another time). Although the ubolt itself doesn't seem to have any dings or nicks in it that would indicate it struck something.

Only other thing I can think of was many years ago my boat was on a mooring chain when the remnants of hurricane Katrina came through Maine, and the boat was directly over the mooring in 5 ft of water, so it was lifting and dragging the 250 anchor all night in the high winds - in the morning there was a 5 ft swath in the sand where the mooring was being dragged back and forth - but that still seems to me like it would be putting the ubolt & plate under tension, and not compression, but certainly could have stressed the gelcoat where the plate attaches.

The guy at west marine says he sees cracks like this on older boats as gelcoat itself is very brittle.

JMO