Hello!
I recently bought a '77 Hobie 16. It has a couple of "soft spots" and a large crack in the gel coat near the forward pylon. I read a lot of the DIY discussions here and watched the awesome YouTube videos from Any at BoatWorks Today and I'm confident enough that I think I know what I'm doing
I started by sanding away the gel coat and damaged glass around the crack and it turned out that the entire inner fiberglass layer had separated from the foam and had gone soft. It could be pushed in by almost an inch. I removed the entire top layer (leaving an inch and a half to re-glass the outside later on), and all the foam to reinforce the inside layer by layering up the inside with new glass (using vinylester resin).
I'm trying to find the right balance between stiffness, weight, and leaving enough space for the foam layer (I'm planning on pouring in foam to fill all the gaps).
So far I've applied 2 layers of fiberglass and it's becoming nice and stiff but I can still push it in a little bit. The question is how stiff should it be? Should there be some flexibility or is it better to have a hard surface to prevent future delamination?
Thanks for your help!