Hobie Cat 17 hull repair

I have soft spots on my H17 that i intend to repair before sailing next summer. I am not interested in doing the injection repair after researching. I have a decent amount of experience in fiberglass and resin work and I'm not afraid of the labor and time involved to make this repair. A few notes: I don't care about the anti-slip pattern, I am not going to race and do not care about added weight of resin and glass, I want to make long term repair.

I intend to cut the the top of each hull off in three sections, staying a couple inches inside the flanges, basically removing all the anti-slip areas so that I can remove the core foam from the top of the boat.

I do not want to reinstall foam.

I want to lay up layers of epoxy/ fiberglass cloth/ and or resin to fill the void left by the foam and then cover the total area on top with a layer of fiberglass cloth and fairing to create a smooth top from flange to flange. I will then glue down some textured foam on the top similar to the getaway foam top.

I have read mentions of people doing a layered glass repair similar to this but I haven't found much in the way of details. given that the space left by the foam will be maybe 3/8 or more depending on the condition of the inner wall, what is the best way to make up the space?

should I just use multiple layers of glass cloth and resin/epoxy?

should I mix a thick batch of resin with a filler like microfibers or such and pour in the middle layer, then glass cloth across the top of that?

I would appreciate any insight into what would be the best process to fill the void and build up the deck. I really want to avoid using new foam sheeting because I don't want to deal with delamination again in the future and because the foam sheeting is not practical for me to get in a small quantity. shipping would be wild to get a 4x8 sheet where I live. I care far more about making the boat "bulletproof" than I do about it being original or as light as possible.

Thank you!

Don't know why you don't want to fix soft spots with injection. When done r
ight it fixes the problem with little of the repair showing. I used the technique on a 1979 H16 and solved the soft spots and was almost invisible. Just know that minimally you need 2 holes, one to inject into and the other for air to excape. Just make sure you only drill thru the top fiberglass layer only, stopping in the foam layer. Drill fill hole on one side of the soft spot and the exit on the opposite side of soft spot. Use a syringe to inject resin (an O ring around the syringe tip will help keep a seal as you inject)

A couple of things here..

Adding glass/resin instead of the foam core while likely not to add that much weight, won't actually be any better than having a foam core. Buying 2 part foam and shaping it is not really a big deal at all.. Pretty easy.. Check out this guy. https://www.boatworkstoday.com/videos/r ... er-part-1/ He has TONS of great content.

Also.... you may not actually have delamination. I just repaired an 86 boat, because I was sure I had the delamination issue. I drilled a bunch of holes and just could not get it to take any epoxy. What had actually happened is the early boats were built a little to light and the inner skin of the boat had actually split and broken. You might start this repair by cutting a hole suitable for an access hatch at or near the soft spot and inspecting the inside.

I repaired my boat by simply overlaying glass on the inside with the boat turned upside down. Worked perfect and now we have nice solid decks.

Before discovering this much easier method I cut of a portion of the skin on the starboard hull to figure out what was going on. My decks now have hydro turf to cover this quick-ish repair which I think looks great.

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