New boat owner here, help!

Hey everybody! just acquired my very first ever boat, its a Valco U13 from the 70's i believe. It seems to have had its fair share of hard use but someone took good care of it and fixed alot of its previous issues from what ive seen, still has a couple medium sized dents in the hull but my main concern is a strip of aluminum channel that goes along the bow down about half way of the hull, most of it sits snug against the hull but there is one maybe 4-5" section that you can see daylight through...is this going to be a problem? almost the entire hull has been coated with what im going to guess is herculiner or something similar and the previous owner swore up and down it doesn't leak a drop...

If it drains the water that gets in Then you're probably good to go.

Kinda hard to see whqat you mean in the photo but I am guessing a keel guard?

thats the word i was looking for, yes it is a keel guard.