Hi Jim, bit of a shame, but at least it's fixable, just a bloody nuisance. I had a similar thing happen to my 18ft 'A' Class Cat, while sailing in a big cat marathon on Auckland harbour, when some shirt lifter on a windsurfer jumped off in front of me, and kicked his board out as he did,- straight into my port hull, putting a huge horizontal split in it under the center cross beam (cold moulded ply hull) about 6"above the waterline. He was going to try and escape, but I forced him to shore, and threatened him or his board with bodily harm if he didn't do something.
He went off in his car, and came back with loads of masking tape and blue tack which I lathered onto the hull, as I had about 10 miles to sail back to the start where my car was. By the time I got back, all the tape had fallen off, but luckily no water got in. Had to withdraw from the race (was catching up with the leaders at that stage), but had a nice surprise about 2 months later, when I had a letter from the organisers telling me I had won the draw for a 6 day trip to Fiji, staying at the Sheraton Resort in Nadi, - sort of made up for it !
Repaired the hull by cutting a layer of lamination all round about 2"back from the crack and laying layers of f/glass cloth in the recess. Worked out well, and you couldn't tell it was there afterwards. Luckily the hull was Dynel covered which took a lot of the impact.
JB
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