Practical Boat Owner January 2018 • http://www.pbo.co.uk 83VIEW FROM THE
B OAT YARD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Pickles is a foreman at Harbour Marine
Services in Southwold. He learned to sail
at four, flirted with an Olympic campaign in
his early 20s and continued with yacht and
dinghy racing until his mid-40s. He is the
proud owner of an MGRS34 ¾-tonner.
■ http://www.southwoldboatyard.co.ukRestoring hull shine
When scrubbing and polishing your hull ceases to improve its
appearance, respraying could be the answer, says Mike Pickles
G
RP boats are pretty
resilient and after a bit of
elbow grease is applied
you can normally get a
satisfying finish, even on a
30 or 40-year-old hull.
There comes a time, however, after
years of compounding, polishing and
scrubbing, not to mention dirty fenders,
lifting slings and the dreaded UV damage,
when you have to concede that there is
no way to get the shine back.
One option, if the damage is localised, is
to renew the gelcoat. In our example the
general condition of this Moody 31’s hull,
though sound, was too far gone to make
this viable unless we gelcoated all the
topsides. Plus we have a superb paint
sprayer at our yard.
Bear in mind, though, that renewing
gelcoat takes only a little longer in man
hours and gelcoat is cheaper than good
quality paint. With spraying, the time is
taken with the preparation, whereas with
reapplying gelcoat, the time is all in the
final sanding and polishing. We spray a lot
of boats here at the yard, so, for us, this
was the obvious route.Preparation
The process is quite straightforward if a
little time-consuming. The first job is to
take lots of photographs from every
conceivable angle. These will provide a
reference for the exact position of vinyl
stripes, logos and names that all need to
be removed and replaced.
The removal of these vinyl decals can
often take much longer than you wouldShe will soon be
shipshape ... after
a lot of painstaking
work such as, right,
removing the decals
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