Gel-cote Pealing

[Tom Boles]

My daughter recently purchased a 1999 Hunter 380 that has an arch over the cockpit. The main-sheet travelor is attached to the top. On 2 places on the bottom side of the arch...in the middle.......and on the corners of the topside of the arch.......very symmetrical....the gel-cote is pealing.

A couple of questions.......1) why would this be happening and 2) how easy would be this to fix and not be noticeable.

I am trying to not lose my "Dad can fix everything" reputation in my daughter's eyes and I am hoping this group can help me maintain that.

Thanks

Tom

[drewm3i]

That's probably not gelcoat...my bet is the arch is aluminum and what is peeling is paint.

[Hardhead]

Originally Posted by drewm3i

That's probably not gelcoat...my bet is the arch is aluminum and what is peeling is paint.

That's what I was thinking as well. It's a lot more common to see paint peeling from aluminum, and it looks a lot like fiberglass on 1st inspection. If it's really gelcoat, I think the biggest issue will be matching the color of the existing gelcoat - due to weathering. I believe there are shops that can match gelcoat colors, or you can mix it yourself by trial & error. I'd bet it might be aluminum though. If it's aluminum, you have to decide if you want to repaint the whole arch, or just do a touch-up.

[Shenandoah52]

Out of curiosity I googled the arch material and in 1999 they were made of fiberglass with some stainless steel arches showing up on some 2005 versions. If it was paint over aluminum a silver substrate, the aluminum, would most likely show through, especially if an exploratory scratch was made to determine the substrate. The SS arches appear to be polished on the images I saw.

Those peeling areas may be prior gelcoat repairs where the final sanding before gelcoat application was done with too fine a sandpaper leaving insufficient bite for the gelcoat. The symmetrical aspect of the areas could also indicate a modification by the previous owner(s).

If you want to fix the gelcoat yourself that is very doable. The gelcoat application is fairly straight forward, and color matching, although a bit of an art, can be understood if you understand how a color wheel helps enable you to determine what pigments need to be added to replicate the aging of the original gelcoat. Same goes if it is painted. It all gets down to how perfect you want the patch to be.

[Suijin]

The arch is fiberglass, perhaps cladding aluminum tubing. I don't see how fiberglass could be rigid enough on it's own for this application but who knows. Hunter later switched to SS but I believe the 90's boats were all fiberglass, and they are out of a mold so I'm fairly certain the surface is gelcoat. That said, gelcoat does not usually "peel": it chips and flakes. If it is actually peeling and the surface is smooth underneath, then it may be paint on top of gelcoat.

As a result to maintain your "Daddy can fix everything" you'll have to learn about gelcoat repair. There is a ton of info on this site and elsewhere about it. The short of it is that it's relatively easy to do a decent job of it, although color matching, particularly on 20 year old faded gelcoat, is going to be difficult of at least time consuming.

However, if you do maintain your "Daddy can fix everything" reputation then you're going to be a busy beaver with this boat. If I were you I'd let my reputation slide so that you're not the default go-to for repairs. It's bad enough doing maintenance on your own boat. Doing it on someone else's is my vision of hell unless lots of beer and quid pro quo is involved lol.