Rudder hole repairs

The hole where my rudder pin drops through on my deck has broken off, it seems as if someone has repaired this before, is there a certain way to go about fixing this (for structural integrety) i dont want to do a bum job and loose my rudder on the lake.

Also the boat was driven on an old beat up trailer and the side rollers were placed on the inside of the hulls and rubbed against the inside of the hulls resulting in a pretty deep gouge on both hulls. Should i just epoxy these gouges and paint/gelcoat repair them?

Any input would be great.. thanks

Regarding the second issue, depending on the integrity of the fiberglass, you may either want to repair it and then paint over, or just fill with flox/epoxy and paint over it.

For the first one, if you're so inclined then you could use some styrofoam taped to the transom as sort of a mold and lay several layers of fiberglass over it, (overlapping the good part of the deck) then remove the foam. I think that would be pretty strong.

If you go to the boating section of my website, my friend and I did quite a bit of fiberglass work, both on my Hobie and on his Sunfish.

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Warm regards,

Jim

The little hole in the deck?

Some people even cut those out as they would get cracked when sailing the boat in surf, which causes alot of stress on the area. They would cut out a little "U". This area is not a critical part of the rudder mounting system. More cosmetic than anything.

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Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

INteresting... I'll keep that in Mind. Thanks, Matt!

Jim

we used to just take a file or jigsaw and cut out a V or a U shape like Matt said. If you want a nice finish, just put a little epoxy or glass in the cut-out edges.
The whole rudder install/removal gets a little easier too.

Happy sails!

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The fact that this windy world is largely covered in water obviously means that man was meant to sail.

Thanks, that helps alot, I figure the worn area is not too deep, its well past the gel coat, but the hulls are solid so I think i will epoxy over and paint it... thanks for the input guys!

You can paint it, else the gelcoat dye that comes with the West Marine gelcoat repair kit doesn't screw up the curing of standard Lowe's 2000lb. test waterproof epoxy, so if you want to go that way it could look pretty good.