Painting a GRP deck with textured gelcoat

[GetItDone]

Hi all,

Currently working on our Pegasus 700. One of the major areas of concern is the deck, which has collected an array of gelcoat damage over the years. I've been grinding out the cracks, laying reinforcement GRP where necessary, and filling and faring the past couple of weekends. The gelcoat itself is in a poor state with lots of staining, marks, and crazing. As such, and because we'll shortly have all of the deck fixings off, we want to paint the deck once the repairs are done. My plan is two pack white paint with grip additive where necessary. We do however have a potential issue: the deck is textured in two different ways. Firstly the majority of the deck has a diamond pattern in it from the mould surface for grip:

and the seating area has a different pattern also in the gel coat:

I am concerned because a) I'm not sure if I can adequately key the surface for the paint and b) If the paint starts lifting its a mammoth job to go back and fix it.

My thoughts are that I can either use a wire brush/cup brush to key the surfaces, or perhaps scotchbrite might do it, and then paint it and use grip additive (apart from the seats), OR I can try and sand out the textured surface, but I don't know how successful that would be or how good it would look.

I'm very keen for some input from anybody who's done this before and what approach you took (and some photos of the results if possible!). I would also love to hear recommendations for paint if possible!

Many thanks in advance!

 

[Sea Change]

I'd put Kiwi Grip on your list, it's very thick gloopy stuff and should do a good job of covering up textured surfaces.
Of course you could grind/sand everything flat first although that seems a bit daunting and destructive...

 

[Stemar]

I'd put Kiwi Grip on your list, it's very thick gloopy stuff and should do a good job of covering up textured surfaces.
Of course you could grind/sand everything flat first although that seems a bit daunting and destructive...

I've never used it, but have seen several YouTubers who have, and found it good - looks good too.

 

[searocket]

Suggest you look at sailing florence youtube videos when they did winter refit and painted their 1980's Oyster deck with Kiwi grip. To do properly its a lot of work.

The grp in your second photo looks like it would clean up pretty well with a good scrub and wash then cutting compound and polish . Also fill and colour match the holes neatly.

 

[chris-s]

We use to have a Peggy 700 and the gel coat on the deck really wasn't great. We always thought the gelcoat was pretty thin in the first place so what you often thought was staining was actually the resin underneath the gelcoat. Looking at the photos, it looks like some serious cleaning would help improve things. Use something like Starbrite Hull Cleaner with one of these brushes ...

Amazon.co.uk

That should remove a lot of the staining and get into the textured non-slip. Any stubborn areas can be worked with a small stainless wire brush. I remember running a stanley blade thru the mouldings in some parts to remove stubborn dirt. Then on the 'flat' areas around the cockpit, give them a good cut and polish with rotary polishing pad, you could even use some 1500 grit wet and dry (wet and soapy of course) followed by polish. Once you have done all that, then stand back and see if it really needs painting. Warning, once painted you will create a chore for future years. We opted to leave ours as-was once cleaned up.

If you do decide to paint, well, we repainted the decks on our current boat this winter. It has an original moulded non-slip like the Pegasus, but a previous owner had already painted the non-slip areas at some point. We used the wrong paint, we should have used something like International deck paint which has a much finer grit in it than the one we chose.

 

[fredrussell]

I'd put Kiwi Grip on your list, it's very thick gloopy stuff and should do a good job of covering up textured surfaces...

Kiwi grip is indeed great at this and as a result MUCH less prep is required, which is nice. Good stuff. My only gripe is that an ‘off white’ would be better than the ‘brilliant’ white they sell. I added a smidgeon of yellow to the white and it was a success.

 

[Keith 66]

The easy way out is just to sand the textured areas heavily with 40 or 80 grit & paint them with deck paint of your choice.

 

[chris-s]

The easy way out is just to sand the textured areas heavily with 40 or 80 grit & paint them with deck paint of your choice.

From recollection, the non-slip on the pegasus decks is not 'raised' so you couldn't sand it out without have to re-fair the areas.

 

[GetItDone]

Thanks all. A lot to consider here. I think the areas where it is raised I am going to sand it flat. The areas where it's not I'm going to attempt 2 pack paint with grip granules in it. Kiwi grip seems to have very mixed reviews and I'm not sure I want to do a job that could look awful in 1-2 years time like some review suggest. I'll update when we decide on a plan and go ahead!