greetings rob

pleased to read that you completed the trip okay.

suggest you have a look at my 2012 june post on the W28 forum, "water in the keel"  you hull no. is 63 and mine is 68, so yours is only a few months older than mine and may suffer from this problem.  if water attacks the resin from both the inside and the outside then risk from blistering and resin degradation is increased.

before you start tearing into the  hull too aggressively i suggest you put in some time researching the problem.  the best source i found so far is, "fiberglass boats" by hugo du plessis  but i am sure there are others.

in certain seas my boat tends to pitch up and down in a radical manner.  i am curious to know if yours does the same

james

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When my boat was hauled after Sandy wrecked our marina, I found hundreds if not thousands of small blisters all over the hull of my W32.

After letting the boat dry out all winter, I scraped and sanded off all the old antifoul paint. I dug all the blisters out with a dremel. There were maybe 10 or so deeper blisters, many near the prop that went a few layers into glass. After opening them all up, I let the boat sit another month, periodically washing the hull with Dawn and rinsing. This supposedly helps to dry the hull.

I repaired the deeper blisters with proper fiberglass and epoxy patches. The smaller gelcoat blisters I filled with 3M "Marine Premium Filler"—a vinyl ester putty which is far easier to work with and fair than epoxy, but also rated for below the waterline.

In the hopes of preventing more blisters, I barrier coated with five coats of Interlux Interprotect 2000e, and finally antifoul paint (Pettit Trinidad SR). The hull looked amazing when I was done. I only regret I could have gotten my act together to do the Dave King hull mod.

My boat was left in the water for two winters, then pulled this year. The hull is still the best looking part of the boat.

It was a very time consuming project, but in the end worth it for me.

lift up the floor hatches and use a strong torch to search the centre of the bilge bonding from just behind the "v" berth to the stern tube. you may have to scrub the bonding clean first.  the plugs that i found were about 50 mm in diameter and a much darker brown colour than the fiberglass.  only two leaked.

the worst leak was at the forward end of the ballast under the compression post. it was located between the aft and middle floor hatches. it was not until i removed the little stump of a post, that i was able to identify the problem. this may be difficult or impossible if the mast is still standing.