Quote:
Originally Posted by SeaRags
Ok, I was wrong, there is no fiberglass, I scraped down a little further to the lead. Looks like the lead was painted, then an epoxy coating, then some kind of paint, then my ablative coat. Would it be bad to just sand it lightly to take off the blisters, then apply gel coat? Or just go straight to the ablative paint again? I just don't want to make a mess of things.
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Looks like someone did paint the lead directly with copper antifouling.
Not a clever thing to do, as the two metals will corrode in seawater.
In a failed
repair someone put a barrier coat on top to prevent that, but did not remove the old copper paint completely, but rather sealed it in. Result, the
corrosion continued underneath.
Then they added more antifouling, which pops now.
If you have a lead
keel, never put copper antifouling directly onto it, but apply few layers of
epoxy first (sticks much better than
gelcoat, which is unsuitable, to the lead if you sanded the lead properly before).
Suitable epoxies for this are for example Interprotect or VC Tar Epoxy.
Go sailing like this now and fix it properly in autumn. Nothing terrible will happen until then despite you losing 0.1kn of speed perhaps.