Fender bender

[RangerRoamer]

Had my first fender‑bender. I was backing out of a slip into an absurdly narrow fairway and cut the turn too tight, clipping the protruding anchor on the boat in the next slip, claiming a chunk of the starboard gunwale.

Is this a DIY or insurance claim and shop fix?

 

[venajeff]

I have done a few gel coat fixes on different boats, it's tricky work. Getting the color match just right is difficult. If you want a repair that looks almost invisible then you will probably have to have a pro do it. And to do it properly takes some time. If you do try it, something I have learned is to shoot for a lighter color as the patch will darken over time.
My suggestion would be to have a boat yard give you a quote and see if it is higher than your deductible, and then decide a course of action from there.

 

[Red Raven]

Ouch! This is challenging one. The color matching is one issue but you should be able to get the right color from Marine Coat One. They have all the Ranger Tug colors.

The bigger challenge is that your damage is deep and not on a relatively flat surface. Forming the gelcoat over a curve with deep damage requires a filler/thickener and special skills. You should be able to buy the filler/thickener from them as well or you can get it from West Marine. You would need to build it up higher than the surrounding surfaces and then use a custom sanding block to sand it down to the matching surface. Also since you would likely need to do this in several layers you would need to use unwaxed gelcoat for the interior layers and only wax the outer layer. It can be a DIY but you need to know or learn a bit about these types of repairs.

Curt

 

[NorthernFocus]

It would have been a lot easier to repair if you had damaged the other guy's boat 😵

 

[Submariner]

I had nearly that exact repair. You're looking around $800. That's beyond a normal gelcoat repair since it's down to the fiberglass. It'll have to be filled in and painted. The damage may extend further than you think as illustrated below. They won't know until they open it up once they start the repair.

I found a guy's who really good with these kinds of repair, for $550 cash. I would not do it yourself, pay someone to erase the scratch.

I was moored in Petersburg, AK. I walked over to help the boat next to me dock, and catch their line. Instead, I had a front row view of them crashing down onto my boat while I stood there saying "throw me your line", they never did. I was glad I had fenders out in the finger slip, else it would have been much worse.

Petersburg, AK and the boat that crashed into me.

 

[Submariner]

The color matching is one issue but you should be able to get the right color from Marine Coat One. They have all the Ranger Tug colors.

I had another gelcoat repair done, of my own fault (fuel dock at Everett bump). I had PSC Marine in Everett do the repair and filmed it. Anything and everything you ever wanted to know about gelcoat repair, with color matching.

Channel Surfing was the first boat with the "Light Grey" factory color. However, the first batch was tinted a bit incorrectly, yielding a more platinum color, thus Channel Surfing's light grey is unique. I reached out to Fluid Motion and was able to obtain a pint of the gelcoat from the can that was used to gelcoat my boat. It is the exact gelcoat for my boat. And it didn't exactly match and had to be darkened by adding black. Brian goes over all of this in the video below.

Photo illustrating the light grey.

This repair occurred when the boat was 4 years old. Gelcoat darkens over time and Brian (PSC Marine) illustrates the color matching he still had to do (to darken the light grey to match my boat).