We just noticed that Rainshadow has a bunch of small cracks on the topsides near the toe rail. Yikes! There are a lot of them, maybe 20 per side. They are not evenly spaced (though they seem to come in pairs separated by a few inches). They are not uniformly positioned relative to the screws that hold the teak toe rail in place, so I doubt that’s the cause.
We know from drilling holes for the head vent thru-hulls that the just below the toe rail, there is the deck-to-hull joint and the hull is about 3/4” thick there. So these cracks won’t go through the hull, they must just be in the gel coat.
We’re wondering if they might have something to do with the dark colored hull and thermal expansion. It gets pretty hot when the sun is on it, even in our mild PNW climate. We checked, the cracks are on both the port and starboard sides. Rainshadow spent about 20 years in the same slip in the same orientation. Sun exposure seems to have been enough to make her have many small cosmetic blisters below the waterline on the slip’s ‘sunny side’ (port side faced south) and practically none on the ‘shady side” (starboard side faced north). Since these cracks are on both sides of the boat, maybe sun has nothing to do with it.
We’re also curious why we never noticed them before. It seems very doubtful that so many small cracks would form in the 11 months since we’ve had her, when she’s 36 years old now. Maybe the cracks were full of polishing compound when we first bought her last November. She definitely needs a polish now. The topsides were painted about 10 years ago, so maybe there were a bunch of repairs made and now they are failing?
I suspect we should do something about them, because it’s not good to let moisture get down inside the gel coat. The idea of repairing them all with new gelcoat, and then repainting the topsides, is daunting indeed!
I wonder if any other Nic 38 owners (or other fiberglass hull boat owners) have seen such cracks and have any suggestions?
