This could take a very long time

Ms. Bettencourt's dashboard looks a little like a Google Earth view of prairie farmland around Pawnee Rock, Kansas. There are strangely regular road-like networks of tiny little cracks across most of the horizontal surfaces.

This is nothing new. This is the way the boat came to me some years ago. And it's not just my boat. I have seen this same phenomenon on a dozen or more Albin 25s.

I thought I had Ms. Bettencourt fixed after a complete repainting about eight years ago. But I was wrong. The cracks reappeared and, once again, began collecting ugly grime.

One correspondent suggested these little flaws are a result of a design that allows too much flexing around the dashboard area. He wrote that he thinks the cracks are in the gelcoat (under my earlier paint job), and the only fix would be to grind the gelcoat down to the underlying fiberglass, then repaint again.

I picked one of the worst areas and started grinding. A problem arose almost immediately. The larger cracks go through the gelcoat and relatively deeply into the fiberglass below. I found a few more than 0.5mm deep. I think that's too deep to grind out.

The cracks are hard to photograph, but if you click to enlarge this picture you should be able to see some larger fisures, including the crevice at the point of this tool.

So, here's Plan-B. I am going to grind off as much as the old paint as possible and clean the network of crevices as best I can. I'll use a dental pick and a Dreml rotary tool with a conical bur bit for the crack work. It will be tedious and slow.

The sanded patch above is about an hour's work with a Dreml oscillating tool. The Dreml out-performs my other sanding machines, but I have to stop frequently to let it cool off.

After the dashboard and surround are sanded and prepped I am going to try an application of Interlux Surfacing Putty  http://tinyurl.com/me3kdhf . The spec sheet on this product says it is compatible with Interlux PreKote primer and Interlux Brightside one-part polyurethane paint, which are the primer and finish coatings I plan to use.

The dashboard crazing is so widespread that, practically, I have little hope of perfection. I'll try to find, clean and fill the largest and deepest canyons and to sand as much as the remaining crazing as level as possible.

More sanding will be required to fair the surface.

This could go on forever.