Polish Polish and more polish

oceandrive

oceandrive

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www.oceandrivecharter.com
Just had Mr Bluesky out of the water in Palma for antifoul and Polish what a job!!! but me and the team managed to show up some of the locals when we re launched within the week and set straight off to Porto Banus. Gleaming!!!!
 
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For those interested in trip detail:

Dapart Palma for Torrevieja 5 Hours for refuel and overnight. Departed Torrevieja at 12 noon following day and arived Porto Banuse 9pm average cruising speed 27 Knots.

Return trip Departed Porto Banus at 5 Pm for Almeria where we took on 3000 Ltrs at 11PM we then had a meal in the reasturant in the marina and departed for Ibeza ariving at 8.50 am in Marina Botafoc. Fantastic night trip with loads of dolphins as day broke. Last 100 miles towards Ibeza was just amazing.

Burnt more fuel than would like to admit but pushedit for a full day in Ibeza so guests could enjoy a few planned hotspots and reastaurants

once we cleared the TSS we managed 30 Knots with a glass sea for most of the trip. Dont get much better.
 
MMMMMmmmm if only I could have done it with that stick with a brush on the end. Well banter aside, we did use a scafold tower and and it took two days each side to polish two of us working about eight hours per day.

However as mentioned on threds beore regarding polishing machines and products the boat was polished with a Clarks machine from machine mart in the UK cost about £65.00 and this machine has now done about four boats per season.

Scufs and marks removed with £M fast cut with a white pad followed by either 3M Rosa or 3M finess-it compound /Polish finishing.

We always wash off prior to polishing with a product available in Spain called Sumascale which is a light acid usualy used for descaling and we find that a diluted wash off with Sumascale cleares all the baked on salt and lime scale in preporation for polishing. Hence the pole and soft brush.

So dont bin the polishing machine just yet I like nobody else has found a short cut.

We also tried a new product whilst in Palma which I have never seen before called 3G which is a quite heavy compound excelent for flattening fender rub marks prior to polish.
 
Used the 3G a couple of times. It is actually a more metal (car paint) friendly compound then a boat (fiberglass gelcoat) one. I would have preferred the 3M Cleaner compoind to it.
All the pros say the 3M Marine products are just the best in the class. May be competed by Starbrite in some of the lighter use polishes but thats just it.
Is that Sunseeker sprayed with Poly paint like Awlgrip or Jotun etc etc or is it gel...
 
When i'm touching up my boat I tend to use use:
3M Finesse-It

followed by:
Mers Car Polish


Is there need to use a heavier compound before 3M Finesse-It I wonder?
 
I used the Boatsheen stuff this year, cutter, prep amd wax/polish, on a rotaru machine. really pleased with the results so far.

Will try to get pics up after next weekend.
 
to the question is the boat gel cote or paint. Mr Bluesky is 100% Gel cote which was something I pressed home during the build. Thankfully I did as many of the painted boats are suffering deteriation and some have had to be compleatly resprayed. We have a very short but very busy season and we tend to fix the odd scrape from tenders etc on an ongoing basis usualy with a beer in the evening.

However the black hull is a nightmare and our biggest problem is cal in the water. the only way round this is to filter all water as it comes onboard then use the deck wash for cleaning, Its a real pain but unfortunatly the only way to ensure that we are not covered in white streaks. .
 
Actually I am surprised by this declaration.
I used to take care of a few Pershings and even there standard blue stripe is sprayed with Awlgrip and after a ten years and a fine polish this remains like new.
On the other hand gel dark colored boats detoriate after a couple years since new and then you have to start sanding the gel with a 1000 grit sand paper and buff every year or two. This will lead to after an apporx of 10 years to a respray in some areas. Consider gel thickness can go fom .5 to 2.0 mm thickness in some areas. With polish and compound u r eating this in 00000000% but when you go sanding with sand paper is not good.
 
Yes fully agree with what you say, and we also have experienced many boats with either dark blue or red hulls which have suffered fading especialy on the stern. However within the last few years there sems to have been vast improvements in the pigments within the Gel cote and thus far we are seeing none of the old problems we used to have.

Colour seems to hold even on the areas which are most sun effected such as stern quarters and garage doors. Sunseeker stated a couple of years back that they had overcome fading and I must agree to date seems to be true.

The black hull however is an issue and platform , Garage door, etc fall under a lesser warranty than the hull its self. This said our main problem in these areas is not fading rather heat build up from the sun. so the garage door for instance can get so hot that you would not be able to touch it. for this reason we can only wash down the aft of the boat in the early evening. For all these reasons Black or dark hulls are very impractical especialy for med based boats. But for an owner who wants a striking looking boat these problems fall to the crew rather than the owner.

We expect that in the long term we will have some problems from either heat damage or loss of pigment. however on a boat of this value re gel coating the garage door and maybe the stern quarter wings is a small cost to pay for the overall effect.
 
I've just picked up some '3M Fast Cut' and 'Finesse it' as recommended and Autoglym Super Resin Polish for the final shine along with some 3M pads. My question is, as I move my way between the different compounds, do I need to buff off each application or do I just apply one on top of the previous one and just buff off at the end?
 
Fantastic shine Gary. Are you not a fan of A Glaze?

Glad the black is holding up well. Mr G got lucky, or at least not unlucky, in that sunseeker have been known to use a black gel coat that simply can't take the heat on the aft quarters and garage door, and ripple awfully causing big warranty problems. MapisM and I have seen one - a year older than Mr BlueSky. They might have been trying different GRP products and got it right by the time they built Mr BlueSky.

I'm sticking with white on the next boat (and A Glaze)!
 
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