Hello,
My boat is a 1986 O'day 35. The topsides have the original gelcoat finish. The boot and cove strips are red. When I bought the boat, the finish was in poor condition. Very heavily oxidized, dull looking, the red strips looked white with oxidation.
This spring I wanted to make the boat look good. I used Poliglow on my other boats, but I wasn't tied to it.
To make the red stripes look better I tried a "cleaner / wax." It make the hull bead up, but the red
looked bad. Next I tried a rubbing compound. It did next to nothing, and was very difficult to remove, even with a rotary buffer tool. I also tried Poliprep and PoliOx (a heavy duty cleaner with Oxalic? acid from the makers of Poliglow). Nothing worked well. As a last resort I wet sanded with 600 grit paper. That worked best of all, but the results are not great.
I did clean the entire hull with poliprep, then applied poliglow. I am happy with the results. See below for some before / after pictures.
It took about 8 hours to wet sand and poliprep the hull, and about 4 hours to apply the poliglow.
Doing everything the 'right' way would probably make the boat look better, but I would rather spend my precious time sailing. Besides, since I finished the Poliglow I had to fair the keel, apply barrier coat, then apply bottom
paint. Now I just have two more coats of bottom
paint, then it's splash time!
Barry
Barry