Can my hull repair wait until fall or must I do it now?

[lakeman]

Just bought a 1977 Carver Mariner 2896. Since I'm not that smart, I tend to learn things the hard way and I promptly scraped up the lowest part of the hull on a rock. Lesson learned to always use a GPS on this lake. This was on my maiden voyage the day before yesterday.

I went for a swim and I could clearly see and feel the damage. The damaged area is about 2 feet long. It was hard to tell but I would say the depth of the damage is somewhere between 3/32 inch (3mm) and 3/16 inch (5mm) at the deepest point.

Since I have no trailer, it is going to cost me $800 to get the boat out of the water and back in, so I'd love to just continue using the boat and deal with the gash in the fall. However, I want to be smart about it. Do I need to deal with this ASAP?

There's no water leaking in. I sleep on the boat at night, so I'm monitoring closely.

[tomschauer]

If your "scrape" didn't get past the fiberglass and into the wood core, its no problem to wait until next season.
If it is into the core you want to pull it asap, as the water will continue to soak through the core throughout the boat and will not be worth repairing.

As far as worring about sinking while you are asleep, if you just grazed the hull, I wouldnt lose much sleep worring about it.

[RGrew176]

If it were mine I would pull and fix. That said if you wait I would wait for the hull to dry before a repair.

[Viper]

Unless you are absolutely sure there is enough material left to prevent ANY water intrusion into the core, my advise is to haul her out and do the repair now. If the core takes on water for a while, the $800 will seem like small change.

The outer layer is gel coat, do you see any bare fiberglass? If you do, haul her out now.

[km1125]

That boat would have a wood core in the bottom?

[bud37]

Welcome to the forum..... I believe that boat has a cored hull, 2896, so I agree with the others here......keep water out of the coring at all costs within reason......good luck man.

[lakeman]

Thanks for the help everyone.

Given that it has been 2.5 days since the incident, if I pull the boat out, would you recommend that I left it dry for a number of days before repairing in case the wood core has soaked up some water?

[Viper]

Depends on the damage. If it's just a superficial gel repair it's not a big deal. If it's beyond that, the area should be opened up to see what you're dealing with. She won't dry out unless the area is opened up, even then it takes a while to dry out properly unless you help it along. If it's a good glass shop, they'll have a professional vacuum system that will put the area under a vacuum and boil the moisture out. This will help dry out the area beyond the impact as well so that it doesn't deteriorate after the adjacent repair is made.