soft spot on swim step

My boat has a swim step that is wood (I think) coated with some black stuff. There's starting to be a couple of soft spots in it and I wanted to know if I should deal with it now or wait until it gets really bad and deal with it then. How do you fix a soft spot anyways?

sounds like it was coated with black stuff to hide some rot....which has now really rotted. The sooner you deal with it the better the rot will progress. Take the black stuf off then cut out all the rot(hopefully there is enough good wood underneath to support the filler)(if not you may just get a new platform) . Make a mixture of wood glue and saw dust...or any other mixture with fiberglass resin....and fill the hole and relaminate with whatever was on there or new stuuff providing you can get all the old stuff off (which sounds like a chore and a half)

2nd option leave it until it cant be used safely and then get a new swim platform out of fibreglass. (thats what i would do)

(Message edited by absoluteboarder on August 26, 2009)

...oh you could also just replace the wood completely with a new piece if its the wood slats that run across the platform