I just noticed that there’s separation between the strakes on the starboard side of my Skerry, on either side of the center thwart:
If I press on the upper strake, there’s a little bit of flex there.
What’s the right fix? I didn’t build the boat, so I don’t have experience with the lapstitch construction technique. Fill it with an epoxy and hope?
Is it a delamination between the plies of the plywood? If you inverted the boat, could you clean and fill the gap with epoxy? You might also be able to clamp the plies together while epoxying.
I’m not sure if there’s delamination, but I can see the seal is split on both the inside and the outside of the boat. It seems to me to be much more an issue of splitting between strakes rather than delamination between plies.
What sort of epoxy will I need, by the way? I want to have it on hand for when I figure out how to tackle this.
Your boat was probably built with MAS LV (low viscosity) resin, and MAS slow hardener. Or WEST 105 resin and WEST 207 hardener.
I’d call the support line at CLC and ask them for repair ideas. They’ll recommend if you should add fiberglass cloth to the repair, or add structural thickeners.
Inspect your boat and see if you feel you need one or two waterproofing flood coats of epoxy over everything. Other edges in your photo look like they are barely covered.
You probably want to cover the existing wood with protective tape, then sand and wire brush the old wood flour thickened epoxy. You want to roughen it so the new epoxy has something to adhere to. Then tape up one side (inside or outside) of the joint, tilt the boat in such a way that the epoxy can flow into the joint, and let that low viscosity epoxy flow in. You might also want to make a stiff brush by cutting cut most of the length of the bristles off, and use that to dab and force unthickened epoxy deep into the crack.
When the repair is complete, protect the epoxy from UV with varnish.
-Rich
Called them, they recommended the same thing you did, with fiberglass tape on the outside. I ordered the materials from them and hope to be patching it up soon!
Looks like there is delamination that I just couldn’t see until I got the boat off the trailer and flipped over:
Should I approach this differently or continue with the same plan of glass & epoxy?
I think the basic repair is the same, but I’d try to flow epoxy into the voids of the delamination. Is it possible to clamp it?
You may want to refresh the overall sealing flood coat. One of the instructions on my lap stitch boat was to apply a thick coat of unthickened epoxy to the outside of the inverted boat. The accompanying sketch showed epoxy pooling in the lapped valleys.
Your delamination appears to be at one of those valleys. If you feel that your epoxy flood coat is deficient, you may want to repeat this flood coat process. You should probably discuss this with CLC. I think a squeegee, not a brush was the preferred flood coat tool.
