There is a difference between what is "Best" and what is practical. While a disolved glue joint will weaken the boat it probably won't fall apart immediately. The epoxy is still there doing it's thing and the boat will still have a lot of strength. Typically a hole in the glass will only expose one glue joint, and while it is not good if this joint disolves, the stiffness of the rest of the boat will limit the amount of stress on this one joint. Since kayaks are typically stored out of the water you will usually have time to fix any problems.

In purely practical terms, white/yellow/brown glue is so much easier to deal with than epoxy, that the loss of strength in a generally rare occurance does get me too worked up. These glues are cheap, easy to use, strong, and non-toxic. Epoxy is expensive, hard to use, strong, and toxic. Polyurethane glue (Gorilla et. al.) is expensive, messy, strong and toxic.

Regarding Rob's comment on heat softening yellow glue and creating stress lines in the fiberglass, I agree that this may be the cause, but not being utterly convinced and being lazy, I'm sticking with good old yellow carpenters glue. If I were trying for the "ABSOLUTE BEST", I suppose I would use epoxy, but I don't thing it would be a whole lot "better". I don't think the cost ($, time, annoyance) would justify the results.

> If the glue is not waterproof, you will have a problem if you
> ever damage the fiberglass on the boat.

> Water migrates down soluable glue lines at about 1'/hour. I figure
> that you have at most 10 hours of paddling time from hull damage to
> hull failure due to water damamge.

> Once removed from the water the glue line dries at less than
> 1'/day. Its likely that you will be hung up for some time waiting
> to repair your boat.

> I prefer using epoxy as a glue, but I usually use dark "white
> glue".