Holly Sole-below Decks

[lyonsian]

Good Day
This summer I noticed that below decks the "used to be very bright and shiny" deck/sole is not so much anymore. It is still in good shape just alot of nicks etc that are starting to annoy the "ship shape and Bristol fashion" in me.

I have been religious in cleaning the deck atleast once per weekend-we are weekend sailors, more often if people go on/off alot.

I use murphy's soap atleast 2x a season (after I checked with Hunter and they said ok).

Are they any products that I could use to "buff" up the shine/remove the nicks? Short of wax?

Ian

[LarryandSusanMacDonald]

As a guy who used to do a LOT of varnishing on other people's boats - I can tell you this - stay away from the Murphy's soap - if you ever intend to put another coat of varnish down. Don't use wax, either.

More than once I fought with trying to remove the residue from wax so that varnish could be applied without getting fisheyes all over. And I can tell you that Murphy's is even worse.

Hunter, and most manufacturers, don't do maintenance on boats - they build them and sell them. If they had to do the maintenance on them - they'd probably build them a lot differently.

Just clean your sole with something like Simple Green - very diluted. And every couple of years, lightly sand and apply another coat of what ever Hunter used - some use a water based varnish, some polyurethane, some regular varnish. Whatever you start with, stick with. But if you wax or put murphy oil on it, yer screwed.

Our sole was crap from when we bought the boat - we finally replaced it with teak and holly vinyl (!) from Lon Seal. Great stuff - looks real, and zero maintenance - except of course for cleaning. We put it in almost 5 years ago and it still looks new.

[scottyt]

after you sand you might want to try to steam out the dings so you dont sand them out and thru the veneer. you will have to let them dry for a day afterwards before you varnish, to steam it just take a damp rag and a hot iron and hold it there for 30 seconds.