Thick nasty crud on neglected submerged hulls...

Need I say more?

Here's a link to some pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ajsemtb/Boat

I bought an '84 H16 in pretty good condition considering...
The sails are in great condition, however, they smelled suspiciously like cat urine... Took them and the boat to a car wash, sprayed them down, and now they smell great, and are very clean with no rips. I did the initial "take it to the car wash and power wash it to get most of the crud off of it" wash, but it didn't take off all the crud. It took off all the outer layers of moss, but didn't take off the underlying crud underneath.

Please someone tell me how to get this stuff off the hulls. I sprayed them down with Starbright hull cleaner, and it did what it was supposed to. It cleaned the hulls in areas that needed to be cleaned, but it didn't dissolve this crud. It may have softened it some, because after I realized I couldn't spray on rinse off the stuff, I got my 5 in 1 tool and started scraping. And that worked ok, but now i'm to a smooth layer before the gelcoat. And scraping sucks!

I'm going to have many posts about this boat soon I'm sure, but this is my plan... Clean the hulls, do the bottom job, repaint if I have to, other wise just touch up, polish the hulls, sail. And I'm going to have to replace the bearings in the trailer too, cuz the tires wiggle back and forth.

I'm sure there are posts on here relating to this, but when I search, I spend more time reading about everything else except what I need to fix, (not that I mind, I'm learning a TON! just not how to get rid of this cr@p!).

Thanks in advance.
AJ

May require a scrape / sanding. Depends on the "crud" involved.

_________________
Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

I agree with Matt - I think you have some wet sanding in your future.

A lot of wet sanding.

the crud looks almost like a thin layer of fiber cement type of stuff. I would think wet sanding would take for ever considering how fine the sand paper is. However, I'm probably going to have to repaint them anyhow, so a thicker grit would definietly do the trick. But would I want to use a polisher type sander or a random vibrating kind?

Now that I brought it up, what kind of paint should I go back with? I've heard gelcoating is expensive, and I don't have the equipment to do that. How much do you boat repair shops charge to regelcoat a H16? I've also heard of 1 part paint and 2 part paint... Which is easier, and how cost effective? I don't want to drop a mint in this old boat, but I would like it to look nice and be functional and not overly heavy...

I used muriatic acid and a power washer to clean ocean crud off a getaway I purchased. I purchased the muriatic acid at Lowes. Not sure what it might do to the fiberglass but if your planning or repainting it might be worth a try. It worked well on the getaway.

_________________
Any day on the water is a good day

I just wanted to close out this post with "the cure". I used Starbrite's Fiberglass boat cleaner from wal-mart to get off the mild staining from dirty water, but it didn't affect "the crud" at all. I started sanding with a mouse and 80 grit paper, and it worked, but then I had to sand with 150, 200, 320, and 400 then polish to get it smooth again... I hand sanded with the wet/dry sand paper for the 2,3,and 400. It didn't come out great, to be honest, but it came out acceptable.

So on the next side (I did them a side at a time for trial and error) I used a rectangular black and decker random sander and started with 150 grit for a few minutes, then thought of the good results I was getting with the wet sand paper and put on 220 wet/dry sand paper on the power sander, wet down the hull and went to town. I have to say I had the best results using 220 wet paper on a sander taking this stuff off, and not damaging the finish. After I did the entire side that way, I went back and did it again with 400 wet sand paper and the machine. The machine left a much smoother finish than hand sanding did. I did an entire side clean in an hour, and another hour on polish/wax and it looks great!!!

So, if you buy a boat that looks like this, use a rectangle power sander (from wal mart is fine, mine was) some wet sand paper, and it cleans off fine. I may have used 600 paper before polishing if I had access to it, but I couldn't find any, and I used Turtle Wax medium to heavy polishing compound and a 7" polisher/sander, wool bonnet and standard pad to polish.

I hope this helps someone someday.