Rainbow Decal Striping - 18 Hobie

HEY, logged in for first time. I am an 21 year owner of an 1981 18 foot Hobie. Yellow. Fantastic boat for Chgo Lake Michigan. Winds installed in 1983ish.

The 1981 had a rainbow striping. It is now faded and I want to replace it. I know how to remove the old remnants. Any ideas where I can find something close to this striping to replace it? It was so cool and it matches the sails.

Thanks, Dave
Hobie owner since 1976

There were a number of different "rainbow" stripe patterns in the early '80s - a photo would help.

A dealer might have some new old stock stripe, but otherwise, you're out of luck for exact replacement.

Removing is best done with gentle heat (hairdryer not heat gun), a plastic scraper and lots of patience and elbow grease. Use acetone to remove the last bits of adhesive. Some people will recommend using a straight-edge razor - sure it works faster, but I've never been able to use one without gouging the gel coat at some point.

Be forewarned that the gel coat under the stripe will be the original color, not the sun-faded color on the rest of the boat. It will be noticeable.

I recommend "eraser wheels" that you Chuck into a drill... You can knock out 72 feet of 4" stripe in about 4 man hours. Tilt disk 30 degrees up from horizontal and pull towards remaining stripe (such that wheel is ejecting peeled off stripe onto the stripe, remember that routers and saw blades never climb-cut, rotation and feed are opposed). Use an up down motion while keeping the disk on the same plane. Get 2 wheels and one arbor from ebay or Amazon.

http://www.vinylstriping.com/multicolorrolls.php

Not cheap, but possible.

A chap in my group had really nice 'rainbow' vinyl decals printed and cut by a local signage shop for his H14. They looked great were reasonably priced from memory but had limitations on length.

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2007 Hobie 16 - 'Slingshot'
1996 Hobie 18 - 'Onrails'
Hobie Bravo - 'Hobie Bites'

please post or send me a pic. include widths of each color.

Thanks for the idea aaronp. I just bought one. I hate boat stripes....

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H18 '85
H18 '89 "Knotty Passion"
H20 '96 "20/20 Vision"
Fleet 259 Central Coast California

They work great at low rpms if you can apply enough pressure to keep them from chattering... I use a corded drill that has a side handle.

I've taken the pinstripe off several boats, and I guess that sometimes it has to be done.. BUT a friend was observant enough to notice that it was really only the RED section of the multi-stripe on his boat that was in very poor shape. The rest of it was really in pretty decent shape. He was able to grab a roll of the appropriate width red at an auto-body supply store and by replacing only the red get his boat back to what I'd rate as 90% appearance, with very little work and expense, and a nice original look.
Sometimes I get to working on something like that
,and end up convincing myself that it's " all gotta go" when in fact I probably would have been better served spending my time and money elsewhere on the boat.

Ha, yes this can be a slippery slope. I decided to remove the stripes on my H16 last year. The dark colors had faded and the decal was nicked in many places. I bought one of those eraser wheels for my drill at an auto parts store after trying the heat-and-scrape method for a while. The eraser wheel is DEFINITELY the way to go (make sure you don't burnish one spot too long though). That made it quick work. But then the shiny gel coat showed up. So then I had to go buy a polisher and some polishing compound. Another weekend spent on that, then power washing and a coat of wax. But when I took the boat to the beach, people came up to me and asked how old it was and couldn't believe she was a 1989! Glad I did it, but what I thought was going to be an afternoon turned out to be 2 weekends.

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1989 H16
2009 H16 squaretop