Need cleaning advise 4 badly neglected Fiberglass boat

Rat said:

Try using regular dish soap and water first; if this doesn't work you will need to get more aggressive.

Oxalic Acid is what you need to look for. This is the main ingredient in many fiberglass hull cleaners. Oxalic Acid will penetrate the pores of the gel coat and get rid of all the stains. It is pretty caustic so you will need to follow the directions on the bottle very carefully. You can probably use Muratic Acid as well, but I am not sure of that. Be careful of the run off while cleaning, it will kill grass and stuff.

Unless the gel coat is very degraded I would not try to re-coat it; it probably just needs a good waxing. Waxing provides a sacrificial layer for the UV radiation to kill instead of killing the gel coat and eventually breaking down the resins. If you run your finger down the side and the color comes off you probably need to reapply gel coat. That color on your finger is the resin and/or paint and the the protective layer is already shot.

Here the link to iboats for everything you need to get started.

Boat cleaning supplies on iboats

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advise. And the very first thing I did after I purchased it was take it to the local car wash & used a foaming brush on it & good ole' fashioned elbow grease. But not much to show for the effort. I then went to my local auto parts dealer & picked up some marine hull cleaner stuff but it was more useless than 4 flat tires on a car. :x So I tried the Muratic acid. Oh it worked, but **** is that stuff N-A-S-T-Y to use even with gloves, safety glasses & face mask. :-& I have some marine restoration & color restoration product I'm going to try after I am satisfied with how it cleaned up (stains).