This is the first boat that I have ever owned. It is a 1979 Hobie 16. When I bought it, I didn’t really expect to be totally redoing the entire boat, but it did have a lot of dents and scratches that where pretty deep. So I decided to just sand those down, and fill them in as best as I could, but it ended up just taking off from there.

After filling in all the scratches, I had to do something about the soft spots. There where two pretty big soft spots that I had to worry about and after a few weeks of fretting over it, and asking everyone I knew about it, they told me the best thing was to cut out an inspection hole. I didn’t really want to start slicing up my boat, so I decided to do a little more research on the internet, and actually my dad found the perfect solution. What happens when you get soft spots is the fiberglass starts to separate. This is called de-lamination. To fix this, you can drill small holes half way into the fiberglass. Then you inject it with some resin. The thing that seems to work is called west systems 404. It is a little expensive, but afterwords, it was rock hard. I highly recommend going this rout.

Well, after all of the body work was done, I went down to the local body shop, and went paint shopping. Wile I was there, I talked to a lot of people, and asked a lot of questions. Finally landing on a paint, I decided to go with a single stage paint. It is called U-tech 3.8. This paint was super easy to mix, and spray. It also is suppose to hold up really well over seasons of use. So, it turned out pretty well looking if you ask me.

All in all I think I spent around 3 months doing the body work, from start to finish. Just a few hours almost every day. Also I think I ended up spending around $800 in materials, and paint. It is a lot of work, but worth the results if you want a pretty nice looking, and sailing boat. But you really need to plan out what you are going to do, and how much you want to spend, then double it!

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