: Why not? C'mon Bryan, talk to me. You know stuff, don't be holding
: back on me....

: Way. I just now gave it a(nother) super duper close examination,
: with your comments in mind, using a flashlight and wearing my
: strongest geezer glasses, just to make 140% sure, and there's no
: hint of cracking inside, looks exactly perfect in there. Also,
: it is no impact or stress zone; I'm convinced that if you saw it
: in person you'd instantly agree that it is pretty obviously a
: garden variety gel coat failure, caused by whatever typical
: reasons gel coats fail for. The size of the affected area is
: roughly the size of one of those expensive-ass rubber hatch
: covers that also failed. Did I mention I like homemade boats
: better all the time? Or maybe I need to see if the "lemon
: law" covers kayaks?

: Anyway, I'm 99% sure I'll go ahead and fix the stinkin' gel coat
: instead of trying to patch over it, altho' nothing's ever for
: certain around here (never underestimate my skill for living in
: denial). The thinking is that the patch will come off pretty
: easy ***WHEN*** I fix it right. And if anyone who happens to
: work in a boat shop and does this kind of thing professionally
: all the time would care to email me for detailed discussion, I
: could seriously dig it. My addy is ngc704 at verizon dot net.

: Here's the boat, BTW....

Gelcoat is basically just pigmented resin, has no strength and gets brittle, fiberglass, specially thin glass like on a kayak is pretty flexible, so the two aren't a great combination to start with. The glass flexes and the gelcoat can only flex so far then it cracks. Over stress the glass and the gelcoat spiderwebs. That one though looks like it was either stapped down way too tight or had an impact with something. The glass inside doesn't have to crack to cause the problem, it can just be too flexible so adding more glass inside will stiffen that area and prevent this from happening again.

Glassing over the gelcoat that's already broken won't work for long, water will get under the gelcoat and lift it and the new glass off the boat.

Bill H.