Faded Blue

Argonautical

Argonautical

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O.k. me 'Me Hearties'.

How does one fix a very faded and sanded blue hull??? At the stern end the blue is faded and tarnished by the marks of un successfull repairs, Rob tried a few things and I tried blue polish, sadly the starboard side is seemingly beyong a polish!

Is there anyone known out there, who can carry out blue gell coat repairs who wont perform 'Highway Robbery' on me.

Any advice please will be greatfully recieved.
Regards
Jas.
 
Talk to AdrianB on here, as he knows his stuff when it comes to polish. That said, I think with all blue hulls, you're eventually talking about painting to keep the lustre - but not for quite some time. How old is the boat?

Rick
 
Sounds like it would be best to get it sprayed in Awlgrip

I dont know of any sprayers who are good and cheap on UK S.Coast. My brother had an excellent job done very cheaply on 50foot trawler yacht, but twas in Lancashire
 
1997, just too faded to polish back I think, paint would seem like the best idea, as long as whoever does it can feather it in with the hull, otherwise where do you stop, and the main sides of the hull are immaculate.

Boat based at Hayling Island.

Jas.
 
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1997, just too faded to polish back I think

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Don't be too hasty in painting it. Last month we took one 20 year old Bayliner with seriously faded and dull blue gelcoat. See next months MBM for the result, but it came back almost like new. This was acheived with nothing more than standard 3M compounds, and a prof polishing machine. Before painting, it is always worth trying everything, as once painted you can't go back.
 
The sun fades the stern quarters on ours, and if left for too long can look really sad.

What I do is clean the area, of dirt / polish etc and apply polytrol to it. This is like a light oil and is available at any decent swindlery, at about £6.00 per small pot. Apply with a lint free cloth, and leave for about 10 minutes until dryish. The colour is restored back instantly to like new. Buff off and then apply normal polish. I use Autoglym Super Resin

Unfortunately the finish doesn't last forever, and I find I need to re-apply a couple of times over the season - but this is only to areas exposed to direct sunshine

I doubt whether this would cover previous poor gel repairs, but certainly sorts out the fading, and is pretty effortless to apply.
 
No secrets. The boat was first sanded using very very fine paper (3000 grade). Then compounded with heavy duty compound, then finished with very fine compound, then waxed. You could shave in the finished article from GRP that was so faded, the dark blue looked almost grey.

All products used were 3M. The polishing kit was supplied by DMS Ltd. See their website at www.d-m-s.co.uk
 
Ask Mike at DMS to refer you to Peter Furby from 3M who is a whizz at restoring faded paint on coloured hulls. In fact, I think he may have done Neales and is always willing to advise.
 
having had a blue hull.. cant say its too promising a prognosis. Nurse, the screens please.
Generally the gel is very thin anyway;you might get a bit of cutting back and polishing over its lifetime, but the chances of the whole hull being in the same sate are low. Someone has always been cutting back that exposed bit; you get that bloom, and start to see just how thin the gel is. I doubt at that stage any remedial work is going to help. A re-gel/paint is probably about £2000, but you then do have a whole new coat to live with for the coming years. One word.. blue is a bloody nightmare to match. Number of people I spoke to just said, er, no thanks, dont want to get involved. Lots of wax, and live with it, or its time for the cosmetic surgeon, I m afraid.
 
You can try Permaguard we had our boat done and it came up good as new.
I have no ties to the company just a satisfied customer.
Try updating your profile with a bit more info then we will know where you are in the UK etc.
Good luck.
 
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