What is the best way to repair pitting? I have several areas topside with some pitting as shown below.
I sense this will be a recurring problem...
Jay,
I think that the correct term for this is Gel-coat voids, and welcome to the club. Mine aren't that bad, but I started to noticed them on my boat not too long after I bought her new in the boat show. They're like tiny air bubbles of a thin layer of Gel coat. O'Day made a great boat, but they had poor quality control at their plant. I don't think that they had anyone checking for these things. Years ago, I watched a show on TV of the Boston Whaler factory and they were going around interviewing the workers and asking them what they did. One particular guy's job was to take a hammer and go all over the hull and deck banging away lightly to find voids in the Gel coat. That was all he did. This is what I call quality control. When he found voids, they corrected the problems on their next hull lay ups.
For your problem; It wouldn't be too bad if the voids were just on a smooth surface, but the problem is compounded with that anti-skid design that is embossed in the Gel coat. I have the same problem on parts of my deck. I was going to try to duplicate that non-skid by using a small piece of potters clay and pressing it on the non-skid, and having it put in a kiln to dry. In fact, I did that, but I never got around to trying it. I still have that piece of clay down my cellar. My biggest problem is; even if I'm able to match the color of the Gel coat and stamp it with my clay, I'd still have to seal the Gel coat somehow so that it will cure from the inside out. In your case though, I think that you have too many voids to do that kind of a procedure. I think that you're better off doing your whole deck over with Awl-Grip and use a Silica sand for your non-skid. A friend of mine wound up doing this to his Compact 16 and his Pearson Ariel 24 and it came out super. Check out the Nov/Dec 2008 No. 54 issue of Small Craft Advisor. On page 26, there's a great article entitled "Nonskid, No Problem." Builder Jim Stumpf shows us how he applied nonskid to his new boat.
Joe
