Fine "white" scratches in red gelcoat????

1

190SigSeaRay

New Member
Oct 28, 2006
105
Cochrane, Alberta, Canada
I need a little detailing advice. My 1999 190 seems to be getting some fine scratches in the red "insert" portion of my gelcoat. They are very fine and not deep at all. I'm not sure what's causing them, and no amount of polishing/buffing/waxing is curing the problem. For a 10 year old boat, the gelcoat is in excellent shape. I'm confused, however, why the scratches appear white????

Is there anything I can do to get rid of these? I'm tempted to use a color-back type wax to hide them, but I'm curious if there is another option. I can't see needing to sand them out, as they are definitely less than 1mm deep.........

Paul
 
I know where I boat there are barcacles (sp) on the dock poles so you get what they call "Dock Rash" which looks like white scraping. I have some on mine but have not tried to deal with it yet. I'm going to guess it will require some wet sanding and then repolish and wax.
 
190SigSeaRay said:
I need a little detailing advice. My 1999 190 seems to be getting some fine scratches in the red "insert" portion of my gelcoat. They are very fine and not deep at all. I'm not sure what's causing them, and no amount of polishing/buffing/waxing is curing the problem. For a 10 year old boat, the gelcoat is in excellent shape. I'm confused, however, why the scratches appear white????

Is there anything I can do to get rid of these? I'm tempted to use a color-back type wax to hide them, but I'm curious if there is another option. I can't see needing to sand them out, as they are definitely less than 1mm deep.........

Paul
Click to expand...

Without seeing the scratches it's tough to say except that you may be looking at dried wax or rubbbing compound. What happens when you rub the area down with acetone to strip all the wax off? Do they go away?
 
Hmmmmmmmm. I haven't tried the acetone rubdown to eliminate the possibility that it's being caused by the wax itself. Thanks for the feedback, my friend.

I wish I could better describe the scratches. They are extremely thin and extremely shallow. To be honest, I have a sinking suspicion(is that term allowed on a boat forum??? LOL!!!) that they may be caused by my neighbor's cat jumping up onto the boat during the night. Yes, the scratces are that fine.

What's really puzzling is that they turn white. You'd think that given the thickness of the gelcoat itself they wouldn't cause an obvious change of color????

Paul
 
I bet the color has something to do with the reflection of light. It's like a shiny metal surface. When abraided, it can appear black, but when polished back to a very smooth finish, it appears silver. All of the colored boat hulls do this. A lot of colored plastics do this as well - so do fingernails. It has to be the lighting.
 
The gelcoat could also be developing some stress cracks. It would be helpfull if you could post a picture.
 
Nope, it's most definitely not a stress crack problem. Like you're all saying, without a picture, it's pretty hard to explain properly.

The closest thing I can compare the scratches to are the fine marks left in the clearcoat of a vehicle when you brush up against a bush while driving down a tight logging road. In the 4x4 world, we refer to it as "trail pinstriping". Except in my boats's case, the scratches look white. Almost like the red part of my boat was painted and the scratches are revealing the primer, except that red sections of my boat are most definitely gelcoat, not paint.

Now you can see why I'm so confused.......
 
Colored gel coat almost always looks lighter than its original color when scratched. Try some polishing compound and see if that helps.
 
Thanks, Dave. That's the answer I was looking for. Except that:

Try some polishing compound and see if that helps.
Click to expand...

I've polished the heck out the boat a few times and the marks won't go away. That's why I was considering the color-back treatment.

Next time I get out to my property I'll snap a couple of pics and show you exactly what the scratches look like
 
If the polishing compound doesn't work, you may have to go more aggressive, but be sure to not take it down too much. As a rule of thumb, if your fingernail gets caught in the scratch as you go across it, you may need to fill it. Otherwise, you should be able to buff it out.
 
I recently had the same problem on my red 200.....I got a bunch of little white scratches on the side from the bumpers. They were definately white, I had a deeper one on the port side too, it was definately white. I took it in to Sea Ray, they charged me $200 to fix both sides of the boat. The product they gave me is outstanding! So, maybe you should just have them repair it.
 
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