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From Chalky to Gleaming: Master Your Boat's Gelcoat
That stunning shine on a fiberglass boat isn't just for show—it's your vessel's protective armor against the elements. When neglected, that once-gleaming gelcoat becomes chalky, dull, and compromised, silently diminishing both your boat's value and your enjoyment.
Many boaters mistakenly believe fiberglass requires no maintenance, but nothing could be further from the truth. The most common misconception leads to the most common mistake: not even rinsing salt and debris off after a day on the water. These microscopic particles act like sandpaper, gradually degrading your gelcoat's integrity and appearance.
For boats already showing signs of oxidation (that chalky residue that comes off on your hand), proper restoration involves several critical steps. Starting with boat-specific soap (never household detergents!), treating stubborn stains with specialized cleaners like Mary Kate On and Off, and potentially wet sanding severely oxidized surfaces with fine-grit paper. The transformation continues with marine-grade rubbing compounds applied with a quality polisher (kept constantly moving to prevent heat damage), followed by proper polishing with products like 3M Finesse-it, and finished with a protective wax coating such as Collinite Fleet Wax.
Beware of "miracle" products promising easy solutions—they typically contain compounds similar to industrial floor polishes that provide temporary shine without proper protection. The difference between properly restored gelcoat and these shortcut methods is immediately apparent to the trained eye.
While complete restoration might take a full day for mid-sized boats, the investment pays tremendous dividends. Not only will your boat shine with pride-inducing brilliance, but you'll protect its value and simplify future maintenance. Once properly restored, maintaining that showroom finish becomes as simple as rinsing after each trip and an annual polish and wax application.
Ready to transform your boat's appearance and protect your investment? Start with these proven techniques, and you'll soon rediscover why you fell in love with your vessel in the first place.
and welcome to another edition of boat talk radio. I'm your host, mark cork, and today we're going to be talking about jar coat. Um, this is going to be a fairly short podcast, but it nevertheless should be very useful to you, especially if you've got a fiberglass boat. So what exactly is gel coat? That's the first thing you might ask. Well, it's that shiny outer layer on your boat that you have, and that shiny appearance is the the first thing they see. Look at a boat and go well, that looks like a nice boat, it's very shiny. Um, but, uh, you know, if you've got a bad jock over, it's chalky or anything like that. You know it tends to devalue your boat a bit and you don't tend to have the same pride of ownership in it. So, all that said, um, let's just go through the the processes of cleaning a boat so we get it looking shiny.
Speaker 1:Normally, you know, if the boat's fairly new and it's one or two years old, you can get away just with the polish and a waxing each year. But unfortunately, most people never do that. They buy a boat. They think, oh, fibreglass, there's no maintenance for that, I don't have to do anything, and I've lost count of the amount of times I've actually been in the marina and I've seen people go down and they don't even rinse the boat off after they come back, so it's covered with salt and everything else and that in itself is abrasive and it does damage to the gel coat. So you know, that's one of the first things that you can do when you get back to the dock or when you put the boat back on the trailer and just clean all the salt and dirt and everything off the boat. That'd be a good thing for an in-depth cleaning and polishing. Um, there are a few steps that we have to go through and it's a little bit more complicated than just washing off with a hose, and so let's just talk through those for a second. So you've got a boat and the outside is sort of chalky, because if you get put your hand on the gel coat, and when it's dry and you rub it and you lift your hand off and it comes off and it's all white, or you know, there's a residue left on your hand and that's oxidization and that's something that we have to get rid of before we can actually start to think about getting a nice shine back on the gel coat.
Speaker 1:So how do we do that? Well, first thing that we do is wash the boat. Obviously, don't be tempted to use the household detergent. If you do, particularly on a newer boat where you're just hoping to maintain it by just polishing and waxing, it will strip all the polish and everything and the wax off your boat. Now, if we're starting from basics, that's less of a problem.
Speaker 1:But I'd encourage you to use a boat soap specifically designed for boats. I know it costs more money usually and it's a big temptation just to put a few squirts of dishwashing liquid in your bucket. But if you can actually use the proper stuff, it will actually pay dividends in the end and say she's actually saving time too. So we don't want to skimp on the step of washing the boat. So put plenty of water on the boat, go around the boat, make sure everything's washed, all the stuff that we're going to be polishing off off later on. So normally this is often just a hull that the top part of the deck and so on of the boat tends to be needed to be polished less often. But that doesn't mean to say that you shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 1:But let's, for the purposes of today, let's just talk about, you know, working on a, on a typical boat, when we're just going to do the hull and obviously this is the hull, between, you know, the tow rail and the water line we obviously don't put any polish or anything on the bottom unless we've got a boat which is dry sailed and there is no anti-fouling. If there is anti-fouling, obviously, then we don't want to make sure that we don't touch that. So the first thing is to wash the boat with the, as I said, with a boat soap, give it a good rinse off after make sure that the water is coming off clean and there's no residue of suds left over, and then, once you've done that, have a good look at the boat. If there's staining, uh, rust, anything else like that, particularly the brown staining that you sometimes get around the bow of the boat um, that's particularly hard to get off, and what I pretend to use is the mary kate on and off. Uh, it's particularly potent, um, but it does a wonderful job and it's great at removing stains and all that other stuff that you get.
Speaker 1:So when we were keeping our boat on the Chesapeake, we used to get what's called the Chesapeake smile, and a lot of boats up in that area have got a problem where it's just the nature of the water. You get Over the course of the year you build up this brown sort of moustache on the front of the boat and it's very difficult to get off, but I always found Mary Kate excellent at doing that. So you're cleaning up with Mary Kate, making sure you follow the safety instructions that are on the bottle and then, once you've done that, obviously rinse the whole boat off again and and just to make sure that there's no residue left over from from from the previous step, if the boat is badly oxidized and we remember we were talking about that when you're coming off on your hand if it's oxidised, it may need to be wet sanded and that means that you'll be using a wet or dry paper used wet, and then we want a very fine grit. So we want about 1,000 grit. I know that sounds very fine, but it'll do a perfect job of removing a lot of that oxidisation, taking that off and going back to a nice smooth gel coat. So we would have to go over it with wet paper. Now you can use a random Warbix sander with the correct paper on it. If you're new to this, I don't recommend that, because it can take a lot of geoco off quite quickly and you can do more harm than good. So if you need to sand the boat then I would suggest that you do it by hand, at least for the first couple of times, by wrapping paper around a foam or cork block, something that will take up the curvature of the hull. So once you've done that saying it like it takes no time at all, but once I've gone through that and I've done that, it's going to take you a couple of hours at least, depending on the size of your boat. Once you've gone through that, then you've rinsed the boat off again uh, just to get off any sanding residue and so on, and already if you put your hand over it, it should feel a lot smoother and nicer to touch.
Speaker 1:Once we've done that, then we would move on to a rubbing compound, and I'm sure most of you will have heard of a rubbing-type compound. It's the sort of thing that they use on cars and all that sort of stuff, but it's also stuff that's used on boats to remove oxidization and remove the top surface of the, of the gel coat in this case back to a very smooth finish that will take a polish well. So I like to use something like 3m marine rubbing compound. It's available on west marine and other online retailers, as are all the other things which I'm talking about today. So once you go through the rubbing compound, then this is one thing where you can do this by hand. But I strongly suggest that you either beg, buy, steal or borrow a 9-inch polishing machine. They look like a big angle grinder. Makita make one. I've got a Dewalt personally which I love Use it. It's got variable speed. It works great.
Speaker 1:If you're only ever doing one boat and you're only going to do it once or twice, then one of those cheaper type polishes that you can get from an automotive store or online will probably do the job, but they don't really tend to last very long. Once we've done that, then it's guess what it's time for another rinse. So we give it a good rinse so that each time we're rinsing it we're getting back to, um, the surface proper of the gel coat, so we're not leaving things behind which are going to contaminate the next stage. So once we've done that, we've rinsed it as I just said, and then we're going to polish it. Now this is, you know, where the fun part starts, because we start to see the fruits of our labor here, um, so you're going to polish it. Now, this is where the fun part starts, because we start to see the fruits of our labour here, so you're going to polish it.
Speaker 1:I like to use 3M Finesse it. That is available, as I said, from online retailers or in your local West Marine store if you're in the US, but I know that it can be found in other countries too. It's just a question of just looking for it. If you can't find it, then you can buy it from Amazon or something like that. I tend to use this with a polishing pad on a 9-inch polisher, and I like to use a yellow wall pad.
Speaker 1:When you get into this, you'll see that there are different colour pads. They're not just one size fits all, depending on the colour, and the number on the pad gives you the amount of aggression in the polishing space, if you like. So for that, I'm using a 3M finess it with a yellow wool pad, which is a 05713, if you really want to know what that is. That's the one that I use, and then I'll go over the whole boat with that and I'll polish. I put the wax on with that and I tend to polish it off with a microfiber cloth by hand. I find that that gives me a better finish and I can actually see more easily where I've been. And also, the other thing I need to caution you about is, if you're using a polisher electric polisher keep the polisher moving. Do small areas at a time, but keep the polisher moving.
Speaker 1:If you keep it in one place, you can actually damage the gel coat because you can overheat the gel coat. Um, particularly if you're using a pad with the rubbing compound, because that's more aggressive, uh, and it will tend to burn up the gel coats. You can actually do some damage. So you should be able to touch the gel coat after you've without burning your hand. But I seriously I've seen it where it gets very, very hot. People are too aggressive with the aggressive stuff, if you see what I mean.
Speaker 1:So go over the whole thing with the 3M Finesse it, get it all nice and polished up and then, as I said, polish it off with some microfiber towels. I like to use those. Uh, that's much better than an old pillowcase or towel that you might have hanging around the house. Spend some money, get the nice towels. You can get those from, from many high street stores now. They used to be quite difficult to get hold of but they're becoming much more easily available. So I I like to use those. I polish off by hand and then you know, you can stand back, or hopefully, and you at the point where you could admire your handiwork and you can wow, look at that, I've done that. And then, once you've done that, you've got one more step and that is to protect the surface with a wax coating.
Speaker 1:Now there are a bunch of different polishes that you can use. You don't want anything with silicones in it or anything that miracle products that are in it that some people say that are in it. What you're going to do is I like to use colonite um, it's called colonite fleet wax um, I've used that for a number of years. I've also tried the 3m products, but I actually prefer the colonite. I think it goes on better and I do all that by hand.
Speaker 1:Put the machine aside, you don't need it anymore. Get one of those microfibre polish applicator pads you know the round pads that you get from the local car store or whatever and I put the wax on with that and then I use a clean microfibre towel just to buff off, and that gives me the final finish, and if you look at it, you should be able to see your face in it very, very shiny, and it should be very, very smooth to the touch. Um, it does take a bit of practice to get to get your boat looking really good, but it can be done. It can be done, um. So one of the things you might be asking is how long does it take? Well, I've got a 32 foot trawler and the last time I did it from soup to nuts in the, as I've just explained it took me all day. So that's probably about eight or nine hours of work, and that was with a electric polisher. So if you don't have electric polisher, it's going to take you longer, obviously. So that's why I recommend it. It just saves your arms and it makes it so much easier. So, yeah, you need to allow a full day for that, and if you're new to it, you might even want to allow it slightly longer than than a day depends, obviously, on the size of your boat. If you've got a small little jet ski, it's going to take you no nice time at all. If you've got a 64 foot trawler. You know it's going to take you a week, but, uh, it just depends, you know, on on the size of the boat.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I've seen a lot of and advertised quite a lot is these sort of miracle polishes where they say, no, you don't have to do any of this hard work, you just put this coating on. Well, I can tell you from experience, they will give you a shine, but the shine is not a shine in the gel coat itself. You're actually putting on almost a kind of varnish, if you like to get that shine. And most of those are, believe it or not, derived or very similar to industrial floor polishes, uh, the kind of thing that they put on in in tiled floors and so on in factories and places like where they get a lot of wear. And, um, I've actually seen people do that. They can actually I'm not going to mention the name, but I've seen people use this and put it on and you do indeed get a shine, but it's not the kind of shine that you want. And if you put a polish, a properly polished fiberglass boat next to one of the boats that's been used with this type of finish, you'll definitely see the difference, and the one that's done properly will outshine literally the other one.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing is that once you've got the boat clean, shiny and looking good, you want to keep it like that.
Speaker 1:So what do you do First things first is make sure that you rinse the boat off after every trip, because you want to get all the salt crystals, and if you're in saltwater, you want to get all the saltwater crystals off the outside of the boat, and if you're in freshwater, obviously you just want to get the general gunk off the boat and clean it down and keep it clean and looking nice and so on.
Speaker 1:And then, once you've at that stage, then you should find that each year all you will need to do is just to do the polishing and then the waxing stage and your boat will stay looking shiny. So a bit of hard work now, if your boat isn't looking so good, will pay dividends later and it will mean that next year, instead of spending a whole day or a week or however long it takes you to bring that gel coat back, you'll be spending a lot less time and you know you'll be rewarded with a nice looking boat, a beautiful looking boat. And don't forget that if the gel coat is looking good, then we'll have a higher resale value to our boat and we'll have more pride of ownership, I believe. I just wanted to say thank you for listening today. If you've got any comments, we'd love to hear them and we'll see you next time.