: I know this has been talked about before, but I suck at searches,
: so maybe I can get away with just asking.....?

: In a serious lapse of judgement I bought a Valley Nordkapp LV a
: year or two ago. Home made boats are ever so much better!
: Anyway, one of the problems I'm having with it is a patch of
: spider cracks in the gel coat that need to be fixed. I haven't
: paddled the boat in months, so it's plenty dry. I have read
: about repairing gel coat, but here's an alternative idea I'm
: liking better right now: rough up the affected area with
: 80-grit, and apply a patch of 3.2 satin weave cloth over it,
: then get on with my life. Advantages: fast repair, color match
: perfect, invisible from ten feet away. Possible down side: epoxy
: doesn't stick worth a flip.

Hey Kurt I happen to work at a boat repair shop and have dealt with this problem alot on fiberglass kayaks. Most people strap them down to their car to tight and crack the glass and gelcoat on the car not even in the water.
Your plan of using a patch will work just fine as long as the fractures are in the gelcoat only, if you can look and see the fractures on the inside of the boat then the fractures are in the laminate (most likely) and will probably continue to migrate through the laminate and when they get past your patch they will start to show in the gelcoat again.
At work I would grind the gelcoat down to the laminate and lay however much glass down in order to be higher than the surrounding gelcoat, after cure sand and fair smooth and spray color matched gelcoat, sand out orange peal from spraying and polish. Done.
The reason for laying exessive glass in the repair area is because when you are all done and look on the inside of the boat you will be able to see any body fillers you used to fair the repair in (looks bad to paying customers). When you spray the gel over your faired laminate have a pin with you to fill in pinholes because you didn't use any fillers there will be a couple for sure. You could also roll the gelcoat on if you don't have air.
If you are going to use gelcoat then you must use polyester resin for the repair as epoxy and gelcoat don't play nice together!

Good luck
dave g