Cleaning a fiberglass boat.

Cleaning a fiberglass boat.

Two of our sailboats are fiberglass boats, and both are over 20 years old. For older boats though, they both still look pretty good for older gals and they do clean up nice. Cleaning and polishing them up is work.

As fiberglass ages it seems to get more porous and it will acquire stains more easily. A good wax or polish goes a long way to make the glass look better and stain less. I have not found a real easy way of cleaning the glass when it gets bad. It is much easier to do a little each week and keep it clean.

Our canal where we dock our boats has pine trees, palm trees and Brazilian peppers along it. We need to blow the tree droppings and debris from the boat decks almost every day or the decks will become stained. A good wax or polish on the fiberglass makes a big difference on keeping the boats looking nice. I use a leaf blower to get rid of the big stuff, and then hose it down.

We would use soft scrub and bleach to clean the fiberglass on a regular basis, but these are not overly   environmentally friendly. There are other cleaners like Mothers Marine Wash'n Wax Liquid that are environmentally friendly. If soft scrub or bleach has to be used, it is just for small spots. Flitz Granite, Marble, Fiberglass and Plexiglas Cleaner  is good for removing wine and food stains and water spots and is environmentally safe. Red wine just love to stain fiberglass.

Getting the fiberglass clean and nice on an older boat is, as said above, is work. There are a lot of good products out there to pick from, and all work and are work 8-). I saw this little clip and thought it would be nice to pass on:  Cleaning Tips: Picking the right Shurhold cleaning materials  (this might be something I should put on my web site if people are interested in it.)

My old boat has a gel coat that is showing its age in many spots. Grinding out thin line cracks and color matching the gel coat is a lot of work, and is what should be done when you see the cracks spreading. I found a spot on my bow deck the other day where I must have dropped something. There was a small ring of hairline cracks around the spot. I did not like the thought of grinding them out…they were so small.

Our house paint is almost the exact same color as my boat deck. It is a latex house paint thus thinned by water. I scrubbed these hairline cracks with water, wiped them dry with a rag and then, with my finger rubbed a dab of house paint into the crack and wiped off the excess. The hairline cracks disappeared. Time will tell how long this will last. The damp crack sucked in some of the paint, and only the crack kept the paint when I wiped off the excess.  One would think the paint in the crack should seal it from moisture and also prevent it from getting larger. Only time will tell. In the meantime, it looks great. If it gets bigger, I will grind them out. I will let you know how long it lasts.