evaluating nose damage

ohioboater · Post by **ohioboater** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:37 pm

My rather ungraceful evasion of a playboater on the NB Saturday left a bruise in my pride and a nasty dent in the bow of my Probe - the edge of the dent underneath the vinyl feels an awful lot like the ABS layer is cracked. The inside of the boat remains smooth to the touch, so it's only the outside that's affected.

There are plenty of dents on the bottom of the hull which don't bother me at all, since those are all very smooth edged. This one worries me, because of the jaggedness of the margin. Anybody have any experience with this?

cbcboat · Post by **cbcboat** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:07 pm

If the there is a crack you could put a skid plate on it a forget about it. Or, 3M makes a product that works fairly well for fixing cracks in RX, its called 3M 3532. It is sandable and paintable and is much like an epoxy as it is a 2 part adhesive. Being that the bow and stern are very stiff it shouldn't affect too much. as long as water can't get into the foam core it shouldn't be a big deal. I vote patch the crack and put a skid plate over it.
My 2 cents,
B

sdbrassfield · Post by **sdbrassfield** » Tue May 01, 2007 11:48 am

My Prophet took a good stern hit when I back endered in the hole in Cucumber on the Yough Friday. The force of the water coming over the ledge just pinned the back of my boat down and it hit the rocks below hard. I inspected the hit closely and there are a few hairline cracks in the outer layer.

As I have done in the past, I am going to dremel the the cracked areas out about 1/4" wide down to the foam and fill w/ waterproof epoxy (west system or equivalent). This leaves a small, smooth groove that can be filled. I will then paint the repaired/epoxy area.

Good luck