Need some advice on how to fix this...

[Bushwacker]

Terry - I'd say those cracks running across the gunnel perpendicular to the toe rail are stress cracks; it looks like they don't turn and run up into the coaming, so it's probably much stiffer than the side decks. The primary stress direction is typically normal to the crack, or parallel to keel in this case. Bending loads from winching boat up on a trailer might do that. That circular crack around the pop rivet is caused by bending stress from the rivet pulling the cap into the hull. An impact load such as from dock walloping will create radial cracks like a spider web. My neighbor, the composites expert that Skip & Carla met last weekend, said that the old polyester is very brittle, so it probably doesn't take much stress/deflection to crack it. The layer of cloth with some epoxy would probably fix it, since epoxy is so much stronger than polyester; just make sure you orient the glass fibers in the direction of the stress like in your picture. You might want to sand thru that brittle gel coat any place that it's cracked however, so the new cloth is bonded to glass instead of the old gel coat. A layer of foam core material bonded underneath the gunnel would provide a lot of stiffness to the side decks and is what he recommended for attaching their Seafari top to the deck. Probably overkill for what you're seeing however. He also said you don't need to use any mat if you're using epoxy. Will ask him about those cracks next time I see him. Denny