I am curious, how did it happen? They say Polytec is more solid than fiberglass but Polytec is harder to fix than fiberglass.
We don't want to ever talk about HOW it happened...suffice it to say...USER ERROR under very stupid circumstances (dark, very early AM, raining, speed, poor visibility, all brain functions not fully operational). BAD situation, very bad....but thankfully I am still among the living.
PS....I swapped everything over from the broken hull to the new hull. The new hull was not configured for iBR so I had to drill that hole btw.....also, AND BE VERY OBSERVANT IF YOU GO DOWN THE ROAD to a new hull replacement.......there are 2 plastic/vinyl tubes that pass through the rear of the hull to the jet pump area. One line connects directly to the top of the jet pump for the siphons, the other line (way low in the hull is for the bilge/hull drain). I re-assembled the ski and dropped it in the water and overnight the rear of the ski sank about 6" into the water to just about the level of the rear deck. I pulled the ski out but did not open the drain plug as I wanted to see where the water would come out of the hull (pointing me to the leak hopefully).
BOTH plastic/vinyl tubes were leaking, especially the lower bilge/hull drain line....water was clearly getting past the outside of the tube and into the hull (I could clearly see water dripping out of the hull looking into the jet pump area too). Either the holes in the new hull for those tubes was slightly bigger or exactly the same size as the OD of the vinyl tubes or the vinyl tubes were not supple/resilient enough to expand into the holes to fill the space (call it a pressure fit if you will)...the seal was NOT tight enough to keep water out.
I removed the top deck and the muffler and could get my hand way down in there and sealed the heck out of those vinyl tubes with LOTS of RTV and silicone sealant (drying out the inside of the hull first, of course) from the inside of the ski (there is not enough room to get your hands/fingers in there from the outside to smoozes any sealant around those vinyl tubes (although using a long thin round stick and dipping it into silicone and pushing it around the OD of the vinyl tubes was also fairly successful. OR Seal the tube ODs BEFORE you re-install the jet pump would be the ideal time. Anyway, I kept pushing in sealant (on the inside) until a rather substantial gob was wrapped around the vinyl tubes and I waited an hour for it to set up. After an hour or so, I refilled the hull with water and watched and waited to see if anything was dripping out....SUCCESS. The hull exterior remained dry, no drips, nothing. I re-assembled the ski and it started on the first button push and ran the next 2 days successfully (and stayed afloat)...the ski is currently bobbing against the dock awaiting my return (weekend usage only)
