Gel coat, paint, or just Polish?

Tim, We always like to greet people to the site so from all of us, welcome. You will find the answers hear!

Try to restore the original gel first and see how it turns out. It's a lot cheaper and easier than the alternate of ether paint or new gel. If it doesn't work, I try to encourage new gel first but it is expensive and requires lots of man hours. Paints have come a long way with the advent of the linear polyurethanes but the bottom line is it is still paint and you need to treat them as such. As a wood boat owner, I'm verry familiar with the care and maintenance needed on paint.

There are a couple great threads on buffing/wet sanding gel coats back to original. I will do a search and see if I can provide a link.

How about some pictures and some more background about the boat?



buffing gel

another buffing thread

Ive heard before that CC had gelcoat issues in '87. The cracks are only a cosmetic issue- that is unless they were caused by structural issues underneath (rotten stringers, floor/hull seperation, hull/stringer seperation, etc).

Wetsanding the gel will make the cracks less obvious. Youre talking $$$ to have them professionally repaired. The real issue is determining if you need to tear into the floor to repair any underlying damage.

Tim, let's see pics of your '87. You can check mine out from my link in my signature below.

I have a spider crack in the side right in the middle of the 2001 decal on the starboard side. It doesn't look the greatest, but I'm not ready to eager to destroy my decals to try to fix it.

Glen