Gelcoat Color Matching, or Close Enough for Government Work

[Ed]

I had 6 holes plus screw holes for old electrical connections, most from factory in 1996 when Strange Bird was built.  When we lived in Florida I had a Sri Lankan guy - Phil the Fiberglass Guy - that I found on Craigslist who did great work, was inexpensive, and could match gelcoat perfectly using the little cans of compressed air from Amazon.  I took pictures of the holes, biggest one was less than two inches most were less than 1", and sent them to three professionals for estimates.  I explained that only two were in the foredeck and the rest were on bulkhead and there was access from the rear of all of them, although cramped, and one was through through deck core.  Cheapest estimate I got was $1800, I could buy new sails for that amount!  I have done fiberglass before on a peak tank for a Sonar Dome and a Puddle Duck that I epoxied and painted, but never tried to match gelcoat.  Anyway I ordered a tube of West System 6 Ten, which is thick enough to stand in bulkhead applications, fiberglass mat, and Total Boat waxed white gelcoat.  I sanded/sanded/sanded/countersunk all the holes/went out an inch or so on the big hole so the mat would bond/wiped with acetone/taped the back of all the holes/precut the mat to have at least 3 layers for each big hole and waited for the temperature to get up near 70 with no chance of rain for two days.  Voila, holes patched/sanded with progressive grades of paper/wiped with acetone/taped off/mixed the gelcoat and applied globbing some over the holes themselves to ensure no show through.  After a day setting up I pulled the tarp off the boat and Ooooops - you can see everywhere I put gelcoat down in stark contrast to the 27 year older gelcoat.  I figured there would be some difference but crap, it looks horrible, but I'm still went sailing Saturday, first time in 2023, on Lake Allatoona. I placed 3rd or 4th of 7 boats, and all but one of them were longer than Strange Bird. My question for the collective is, "should I use brown or yellow to tint the next coat of gelcoat?"  I watched a few Youtube videos, but they don't show how to tint the gelcoat to my satisfaction re: use brown or yellow, small drop at a time and dab to compare.    I got the chartplotter/battery/solar panel up and going, thanks again Charles, of course I ended up popping the fuse to the chartplotter when one of my crimped on connections to the controller came loose.  I knew I should have soldered everything, but you live and learn.  I have two days of clear, warm weather this week and plan on fixing my mistakes.  Getting quotes on new sails, hopefully have them on before the FL120, plan on switching the masts back to the correct position and have the foot of the sails even and able to clear the aft bimini/center cockpit cabin tent, it's an either/or now.  As always, thanks for your help, however sarcastic it may sometimes be, it's always in good fun, and I really appreciate it.  I tried to put some pictures of the fiberglass repairs but I obviously haven't mastered the art of reducing the size of photos on my Macbook Pro yet.

[Ed]

Maybe this will work, after I reduced them enough to fit.  I didn't take any photos after I sanded it smooth but the repairs really show after sanding and the contrast between old and new is worse. I don't really want to use any colloidal powder to thicken the gelcoat (don't have a real respirator, so I work outside with one of my N95 Chinese Virus Mask leftovers that didn't work anyway, but I bought a 100 of them). Progressive repair photos:

[Wayne Howard]

Huh! If you click on the pictures, they blow up to a good size for old eyes.