All,
I just returned from winter yacht yard and discovered many, many cracks in the gel coat below the water line on my 1993 First 310. There are whole ''chips'' in the gel coat in a few places. There is not apparent pattern -- the crack are all over and caused the yacht yard to call me to come out and see them when they were looking at my boat for other spring work I had planned.
The boat has been in fresh water all of its 11 years, with a fresh coat of VC 17 each year. I have never noticed any cracking at all, of any kind, before. Now, the folks at the yacht yard say that they think there must be some kind of defect unique to my boat (perhaps related to other Beneteau hull problems they previously heard of). I am shocked to hear that the remedy may call for planing off the entire gel coat below the water line and re-doing it -- perhaps a $10,000 production -- not to mention weeks out of delay getting back into the water.
If anyone can give me any advise on this issue -- have you ever heard of anything like this, will Beneteau help me, is there a simpler solution than redoing the whole boat, what could possibly cause this, is there any chance I could claim this on my insurance, is my boat damaged in a fundamental way, regardless of what I do?
As you can see, I am in a mild panic. I have never had any problem like this before and don''t know how big a deal it is or what to do. Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to phone me if you think you have good advice.
Thanks, in advance.
Marty Reiner
312-952-8731
I just returned from winter yacht yard and discovered many, many cracks in the gel coat below the water line on my 1993 First 310. There are whole ''chips'' in the gel coat in a few places. There is not apparent pattern -- the crack are all over and caused the yacht yard to call me to come out and see them when they were looking at my boat for other spring work I had planned.
The boat has been in fresh water all of its 11 years, with a fresh coat of VC 17 each year. I have never noticed any cracking at all, of any kind, before. Now, the folks at the yacht yard say that they think there must be some kind of defect unique to my boat (perhaps related to other Beneteau hull problems they previously heard of). I am shocked to hear that the remedy may call for planing off the entire gel coat below the water line and re-doing it -- perhaps a $10,000 production -- not to mention weeks out of delay getting back into the water.
If anyone can give me any advise on this issue -- have you ever heard of anything like this, will Beneteau help me, is there a simpler solution than redoing the whole boat, what could possibly cause this, is there any chance I could claim this on my insurance, is my boat damaged in a fundamental way, regardless of what I do?
As you can see, I am in a mild panic. I have never had any problem like this before and don''t know how big a deal it is or what to do. Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to phone me if you think you have good advice.
Thanks, in advance.
Marty Reiner
312-952-8731