Boat Survey Questions

[rangoons]

Hi,
I had a survey done yesterday on a 1998 28' TE. While the survey went very well, the bow thruster stopped working when we were pulling back into the slip. (lucky for me) Anyway the owner is going to have to have it repaired. When we turned the thruster on the motor was spinning but it sounded like the propeller was not turning or engaged. any tips or hints?
Another issue was the gel coat. It is in fair condition, but the surveyor said that in a couple of years I would need to get it painted. He said compounding it would only bring it back about 50%. While we were at the marina having the boat hauled for the survey, the marina owner came over and commented that he thought it was a beautiful boat. I told him what the surveyor said about the gelcoat and he disagreed 100%. He said that the gelcoat on these boats is very thick and if I hired a detailer that knew what he was doing, he could bring the boat back to new condition. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

[johnmurray]

Your bow thruster problem is almost certainly a broken shear pin. The shear pin (like on an outboard motor) is there to protect the motor, gears and shaft if something gets caught in the thruster tunnel and stops the propellor from turning. The fix is conceptually simple...replace the pin...but the motor has to be removed to do it because the pin is located at the bottom of the motor. This can be done with the boat in the water. If the thruster manual is available, it provides east to follow instructions.

[AlMar]

I have an '89 sportfisher model, and we did the compound work (ourselves) this spring. I could see the reflection of houses from 50 yards away like they were in a mirror. It IS a difficult job, that requires some very specific steps, and a finish of teflon wax (the relatively easy part). But you'll never know how big your boat really is until you do this job. The outside of these boats are MUCH bigger than the inside (how do they do that?) If the gelcoat is anything like the older models, I can't see any reason to go the paint route for many years. Take note. It may take two or three years of this technique to come back to the original sheen, but I believe it will.
AlMar

[Mariner]

I spend a lot of time over at a site much like this one for Boston Whaler owners, and restored my 1971 Boston Whaler a couple years ago.

One thing I see people do over and over again is repaint hulls that would actually be better if they were simply buffed and waxed. I consider it a tragedy when this happens. My Boston Whaler is a 1971, but when I buffed out that gelcoat, it looked like it came out of the mold yesterday. So unless your boat has seen really bad abuse, I can't imagine it needs to be painted.

The transom on our Albin (dark blue hull) was exposed to the California sun for several years and was looking pretty faded. I applied the same method of polishing to it as I did on my Whaler and it looked GREAT!. The mistake I made was in not following it up with a coat of hard wax to protect it, and now it's fading again and will have to be redone. It's clear that a yearly coat of wax (hard wax, not cleaner wax) should be part of every boat's maintenance regimin.

The method I used: I started out with a large, 10,000 rpm angle grinder and put a buffing wheel on it. This is hard core, industrial strength stuff. The buffing wheel is not supposed to go anywhere near those rpm's but, it worked anyway. If your forearms are weak, you may have trouble with this, as the torque is astounding. But I was able to do it. I applied 3M Cleaner Wax liberally to the hull and went at it with the buffing wheel. You have to be careful, as this can damage the gelcoat if it doesn't have the cleaner wax as lubrication, but it really brings out the shine. It compresses hours of hand buffing into minutes. This process will sling excess wax all over the place, so you have to wash the boat with soap afterwards. Following this, you want to apply some regular 3M Hard Coat Wax using a regular buffer. You can do it by hand, but a low speed car buffer will really take the back pain out of it and save you a bunch of time. Repeat this step every year, using the high speed buffing wheel only occasionally for sections that have oxidized heavily.

[AlMar]

Hmmm. I'm going to partialy agree with Mariner. IMHO, the reason you need to do anything at all is because the oxidation has made the hull (look) faded. Soooo, the main thing you have to do is remove that stuff. In our routine, we used a soft polishing compound (dupont number 7?) NOT the stuff that comes out of the can hard (turtle). It's a two man job because you want the guy with the grinder(at a lower speed than Mariner) to take off the compound before it dries. So we would do about 2X2 (4 sq ft) at a time. Then we used the buffer pad over the Teflon wax. I don't know where teflon is on the hardness scale. Didn't use a quart on the whole hull, but I haven't done parts of the topside yet either. It worked for us. Guess it depends on the degree of oxidation. Next year I might try mariners method on one side and find out I wasted a WHOLE lot of energy
AlMar

[rangoons]

Thank you all so much for your help.

[Lowe Key]

I am the newbie here... I had a trawler for 13 years and she was compounded with 3M's products about every 3 years. The two guys in the boatyard were not that expensive and she was beautiful. It seemed I could do a lot of compounding for the price of paint. It is the oxidation, and the farther south the more (faster) it happens.

I have been looking this summer at the 28TE's, as well as a 31TE. I do not want a painted hull, I don't believe. It is the idea of ongoing painting verses a good rubbing. You do have to be careful you don't buff too hard but the glass does shine. I do know Algrip you can touch up, which you can not with Imron (or the other way around).