Fiberglass hull repair in Mobile, AL

Mobile Bay Fiberglass Anybody who runs Mobile Bay or the Mobile-Tensaw Delta long enough finds the bottom eventually. Oyster bars move, stumps hide a foot under stained water, and a sandbar that was not there in spring is there in July. When you come home with a grinding noise still in your ears and a crack or hole in the hull, the question is not who to blame, it is how to get the boat fixed right so the repair is as strong as the original laminate.

That last part matters more in hull work than anywhere else on the boat. A hull repair done with filler and paint looks fine on the trailer and fails the first time the boat pounds through a chop off Gadsden Point. We repair hulls the way they were built, grinding the damage back to solid glass, cutting a proper tapered scarf around it, and laying new fiberglass in staggered layers with resin suited to the original construction. The patch ends up tied into the surrounding laminate instead of sitting in it like a plug. On cored hulls we also check that the impact did not shear the core from the skins, because that damage hides well past the visible crack and shows up later as a soft panel. Catching it during the first repair costs a little more grinding and saves a second haul-out.

Blisters are the slower version of the same problem. Water migrates through the gelcoat over years afloat, reacts with the laminate, and raises the pox of bumps you find at haul-out. A handful of isolated blisters is a routine repair. A bottom covered in them calls for opening them up, drying the hull, and refinishing with a barrier coat, which is a bigger job we quote against your specific hull rather than guessing.

We work on everything from bay boats and skiffs to sailboats and offshore hulls, and we coordinate haul-out for boats kept in the water at Dog River and elsewhere around the bay. If the boat took a hard hit, call (251) 220-4157 before you run it again. We can usually tell you from photos whether it is safe to bring in on its own bottom or needs a trailer.

When boats come in for this

• Hit an oyster bar or stump and now there is a crack or gouge in the bottom
• The bilge is taking on water and you cannot find where it comes from
• A hole or shattered section from hitting a dock, piling or another boat
• Bubbles or blisters on the bottom you noticed at haul-out
• A crack that keeps coming back through an old repair
• Flexing or oil-canning in a hull panel that used to feel solid

What it costs

Full ranges for every job type are on the cost guide.

How the job runs

1. Inspect the damage inside and out, including sounding the laminate around the visible break.
2. Grind the damaged area back to clean, dry, solid glass with a tapered edge.
3. Rebuild the section in staggered layers of fiberglass matched to the original layup.
4. Fair the repair so the hull runs true through the water.
5. Finish with gelcoat or bottom paint to match the rest of the hull.
6. Water test or leak check before the boat goes back to you.