As I am a heavier than average intermediate windsurfer, my Fanatic Shark gets a fair bit of use on days when there is enough wind for planing. I bought it second-hand from eBay at a good price. It's the 2009 model and at 80cm wide is very stable and easy to sail.
I noticed that my board had developed a bubble about 4 inches in diameter on the deck just forward of the mast track. I didn't want this to spread so the only option was to chop it out and repair it.
I carefully cut out the bulge using a hacksaw blade.
This revealed that the problem was caused by insufficient resin when
the board was built in the factory. In order to achieve the "epoxy
sandwich" the resin needs to actually soak through the matting and stick it to the foam core. You can see that in the factory, the fibreglass mat
is stapled to the foam core and then presumably the resin is sprayed on.
When you consider that new boards cost £1000+ firms like Fanatic ought
to make a bit more effort to control quality.
Having cut out the bad area, I then sanded the edges of the repair to get the tapered edge that is essential for successful board repairs.
I then cut a piece of fibreglass cloth and a piece of mat to the correct size and epoxied these on using West System Epoxy carefully mixed in a graduated mixing cup.
I left this overnight to set and the next day sanded it off.
The repair needed a small amount of epoxy filler to get it perfectly level.
Once that was set I gave the repair a final sand off ready for painting.
I sprayed the repaired area using a can of white car paint. I recreated the non-slip finish by sprinkling sugar into the paint and then spraying over that again with a few more layers of paint.
The repair turned out well and some months on, I haven't had any further problems with the board.
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