Trituradora de Canoa - Damage Assesment & Repair


A close up of the bottom with tape added to the most flexible part of the keel. I put a short strip right over the crack, which looked much worse than I had thought after sanding.  It is too bad, I cannot reach this part of the sit on top from the inside of the hull.  After the short strip I added a 1.5 inch strip and a 2.5 inch strip about 3 feet long.



Here is a long shot of the hull after sanding reveals all the old repairs.


To make tape by cutting fiberglass cloth in a straight line, I remove a few threads. This makes a path I can easily see for the scissors to follow.


I save the left over threads and twist them up and add resin to them to repair the stern wear on the keel.



Here is the stern repair. After the epoxy set a bit more I used my fingers to form it and smooth it out.  I will do minimal sanding on the sides of the repairs and the rest will get smoothed by rocks and logs.

Now I'm wondering if a composite boat is actually better than a plastic boat.  I drag the plastic boats everywhere except on pavement and they last a long long time without ever needing repairs and painting on the bottom.









Fat Frank or Trituradora de Canoa

My old Watertribe name was Fat Frank, but based on my boats maybe it should be changed to Trituradora de Canoa.

Anyway, I was very optimistic about the Current Designs Kestrel 140 repairs after coming back from all the rocks in UP Michigan.  I thought I would not need any repairs until this winter, but the oysters in Core Sound were more than my light hull could take.


Mostly I just have scratches in the paint and epoxy.


These scratches look bad but it is the paint that was removed.


Here some of the epoxy was worn down to the old gel coat.


The scupper hole has these weird cracks around the epoxy here. I just smoothed out what the previous owner did and filled it with paint.  It never leaks here so I think this will be fine for a few years.


This crack will need repair.  It is just forward of an area where I stiffened the hull by adding more layers of glass.  I think I need to extend the glass stiffening layers forward given the abuse this boat is subjected to at times.  At this rate it will be as heavy as a Kruger Canoe in the coming years.