Hey Bo....
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Last few days and actually last few weeks have been crazy busy.
Went to Argentina to teach my two day detailing boot camp class.
Went to Wayne Carini's shop to film two new segments for "Chasing Classic Cars".
Then yesterday was shooting three new segments with John Greviskis for Ship Shape TV from 7:00am to 4:00pm and as soon as I could get out of here had to go to the local Stuart Tuesday night car show.
Also, one thing I try to share with people that have boats that are currently in good to great condition is NOW is the time to polish and wax them to keep them in great condition.
Letting them go to the point where they are oxidized creates a TON of hard work over long hours to undo the damage.
What I see in the boat detailing industry is if you hire someone to do it for you then you get what you pay for and this usually means hack work and the detailer will almost certainly swirl out your hull like this....
Holograms in gel-coat boats
The boat detailing industry is so far behind the car detailing industry as far as quality of finish being produced. The issue is one of the same issues we deal with in the automotive detailing world and that is....
Holograms
Oxidized gel-coats require wool pads, rotary buffers and aggressive compounds to remove the oxidation in a time-efficient manner due to the size of marine craft and the difficulty in doing this type of work.
Here's an example
The owner sent me this picture and in the picture with the boat on the lift the condition of the boat doesn't look too bad, that is to say, the boat looks pretty good.
Let there be light!
Now with the boat in our studio and some light placed on her, a new story emerges...
Here's a shot showing three lights, the first light is the flash from my camera, the second two lights are flood lights.
Holograms in gel-coat
The below picture is a full size section cropped out of the above resized picture. The lines you see running back and forth across where the flash from my camera is lighting up the side of the hull are holograms from a rotary buffer.
Even more pictures of the horrible condition this boat is in here,
Sign-up: 24' Shearwater Extreme Boat Detailing Class
Water Spot Stains & Oxidation
Not only is the entire hull filled with holograms from the misuse of a rotary buffer, (the normal practice by most boat detailers), the gel-coat is also oxidized and covered with water spot stains.
So point being, if your boat is currently in good to great condition, I'd whole heartedly recommend getting a Flex 3401 Forced Rotation, Forced Oscillation German made polisher instead of a rotary buffer and instead of a cheap random orbital polisher and keep the gel-coat up while it's still an easy job to do.
Just the 2-cents from a guy that had buffed out boats like you see above and knows the value and difference in time, energy and money between undoing the damage above and maintaining something that's already nice.
