Today I decided my back felt well enough to tackle some more of the cleaning/de-oxidizing on Serenade. A week or so ago I bought a good wool pad and cleaning spur for my rotary tool. The wool is definitely better than foam! Anyway, I got most all of the topsides compounded before the rain shut that project down. Since I was already getting wet, I went ahead and started cleaning/scrubbing the deck. There is a LOT of oxidized gelcoat, and little specks of mildew pretty much all over the deck and cockpit. I thought about wet sanding, then doing an acid wash, but remembered that I had bought 100 melamine sponges (generic Magic Eraser) a while back. I figured I'd give that a try, and see if that would get the worst of the grunge and oxidation off. Well, it took a fair amount of elbow grease in the process but it worked quite well. I also have a nylon bristle brush that I can use in my drill, and I used that to scrub the non-skid. The ground below the boat is now coated in a fair amount of white powder. Anyway, now that the worst of the stuff is off, I should be able to start with the compound and wool pad on the deck. I did take a couple pics, but the camera in my phone doesn't have a very good dynamic range so you can't really see the detail. Anyway, I spent about 9 hrs playing on the boat so it was a good day today!
