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Reply to: 84' Hobie 18 hull repair, no foam core along center of hull??

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[quote=Dogboy]If I had to guess, I would say probable manufacturing defect.  Boats built during this era were built in the early stages of Hobie's learning about vacuum bagging.  My guess would be that they had an issue getting the inner skin to compress properly against the bottom of the boat - basically the inner layer of fiberglass bridged the inside radius creating a void between the glass layers.  Either that or there was a really poor job done prepping the surface between layers of glass.

Anyway, it looks like what you've got there is a can of worms opened up.  If it were me, I would probably take a quarter and rap the edge of it along the bottom of the hull.  You should be able to hear a pitch difference between where you have good bond and bad bond (delamination).  Mark out the delaminated area, carefully drill through until you hit the void, and then inject epoxy to bond the two layers back together.

If you continue down the path you're headed on, you could be in for a heck of a lot of fiberglass and gelcoat work.

sm[/quote]

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