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In 2006, Bob Lacovara gave a presentation at the SSA Convention in Ontario, CA about gel coat and refinishing. He basically said that a good refinishing job will involve removing all the gel coat down to the composite substrate (but not getting into the substrate AT ALL!) if the gel coat exhibits crazing or cracks. Just sanding to a smooth finish and then applying a top coat of filler, new gel coat or paint will allow the cracks to manifest themselves rather quickly. He also said that the wide disparity in the quality of a gel coat finish on older gliders was traced to the glider manufacturers' process of applying gel coat into the mold and the time that lapsed between the application and actually laying in the first composite layer. In the early days of composite manufacturing, it was thought that the gel coat could go as much as a couple of days before the composites had to be laid over the uncured gel coat. After examining records from several manufacturers, it was discovered that a gel coat surface that had no more than an hour of exposure to the air before being sealed by laying in the composite skin and wing structures showed little or no deterioration, cracking or crazing even after a couple of decades, whereas gel coat that was applied and exposed to the air for more than four hours (and sometimes overnight or even longer) exhibited various degrees of crazing and cracking over time. Mr. Lacovara also stated that there have been many different types of gel coat over the years, and some are better than others. He also stated that the boating industry uses far superior coatings today that are pretty much unavailable to the sailplane industry, simply because glider manufacturing is so tiny compared to the boating world. He estimated that ALL the glider manufacturers in the world would total less than ten percent of the capacity of even the smallest boat manufacturer. At the time of his presentation, Bob was the Secretary of the American Composites Manufacturing Association and had access to a great deal of information on composite manufacturing worldwide.

George Moffatt was quoted as saying that, "Glider designers, when plied with enough drinks, will eventually admit that there are good ships and bad ships from the same molds."