[SloopJonB]

Simply glassing over a carvel hull has been known for years to be a bad idea - unless you put on so much glass that you essentially have a glass boat with the plug still inside. If not, it apparently only guarantees rot and the demise of the boat. The expansion & contraction of large pieces of wood (planking & frames) eventually overcomes the bond of the skin.

Cold moulding over a carvel hull is another matter entirely - a process wherein the seams are reefed out and splined with softwood and then layers of veneer laminated over the hull produces an extremely strong and long lived boat. It has successfully been done numerous times - locally Jespersons have done it and they are about as good as they come when it comes to wood boats. Obviously it makes for a fairly heavy boat but apparently has little effect on flotation due to the increased buoyancy of the slightly larger hull.

It's no way to BUILD a boat but it's a good way to SAVE a boat that is otherwise beyond economic repair. In these cases, the glass is only a skin, basically for abrasion resistance.

P.S. IIRC, Rod Stephens old "Mustang" was rebuilt this way.