The cockpit bench is cracking near the stern, where I stand on it getting onto or off the stern ladder. I think the plywood is probably a bit too thin for its job here. I have marked the limit of each branch of the crack with a dot and marked out a triangle which covers the whole area I want to replace. I can't do any work directly on it until I get her home for the winter, but I have started preparing for the repair
I will cut out the cracked area with my Bosch multitool. Just to practice, I have cut out a 6mm ply patch from a larger sheet using the multitool and it works brilliantly. Far neater and quicker than a jigsaw, which requires drilling holes for the blade to plunge through. The multitool blade just shakes its way through in a couple of minutes.
Then I cut out a larger patch, which will go under the hole in the deck, when that is bonded in, the finishing patch "should" just drop into place. Then a bit of filling, sanding and painting and all should be better than new. I will glue in the under patch using the blind patching technique I used on my old fibreglass dinghy many years ago, which worked remarkably well. But I can t do it yet as It will take a few days (waiting for epoxy to cure mainly), and I need to get the plywood thoroughly dry. Rain has got in so the area is damp.
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