Archive for October 2016

How To Wax a Boat

Your boat’s fiberglass gelcoat will maintain its high gloss for a long time if you keep it clean, waxed and stored out of the sun. If the surface has started to discolor or dull, or if the gelcoat has been subjected to a lot of wear and tear, you’ll need to learn how to buff a boat. Although the process is basically simple, and not much different from buffing a car, every boat owner has a unique take on it. This article explains the basic steps in buffing a boat.

Position the boat on the trailer securely. Boats should be waxed out of the water, secured on the trailer, preferably parked on a flat, even surface. Because you'll be spraying products and moving all around the boat, you'll probably not want to have the trailer attached to your car, either.

Depending on the style of your boat, you'll probably want to put the cover on before you get started waxing and cleaning the boat. To keep the interior safe, keep the cover on.

Clean the old wax from the surface. Use rags soaked with toluene or another dewaxing solvent to remove traces of old wax, which can keep polish and rubbing compounds from working evenly across the surface of the boat.

Sweep the rag in one direction, applying light pressure. It's not something you should usually have to scrub very hard to remove. Allow the solvent to evaporate before buffing.

Sweep the rag in one direction, applying light pressure. It's not something you should usually have to scrub very hard to remove. Allow the solvent to evaporate before buffing.

Wash with a proper detergent. Finish washing the surface with a sponge and special boat soap or a mild solution of dishwashing detergent and warm water.

If the surface of your boat is stained, it's sometimes common to use a small amount of bleach to disinfect and clean thoroughly. It's also sometimes common to use lacquer thinner, Varsol or a special degreaser to remove sticky adhesive spots or greasy buildup. Don't use bleach on untreated or unstained wooden boats.
Rinse the boat thoroughly with clean water and allow to dry. You can use a squeegee to speed up the drying process, if necessary.

Consider using a polish or buffing compound. Both polish and buffing compound are abrasives, which restore the shine to your boat’s fiberglass gelcoat by removing imperfections, discolorations and scrapes in the surface, increasing the reflective shine.

Choose polish if your boat only needs light refinishing. Go with a stronger rubbing compound if the surface is excessively pitted or chalky, signs that the surface needs a much more substantial cleaning.
Be very careful when using a rubbing compound. Gelcoat is extremely thin and an aggressive compound can burn through it quickly, necessitating an expensive and time-consuming repair job

Begin at the transom and work toward the bow. Work in sections about 2 feet (0.610 meters) square to apply the rubbing compound or polish. Use a soft cloth if you’re working by hand, or fit the buffer with a foam polishing pad. Apply a circle of polish or buffing compound to the cloth or pad and rub it into the surface using a steady, even, circular motion. Buff until the surface becomes glassy looking. If you can see through the gelcoat, you’ve gone too far.

Some purists swear by hand buffing, while others argue that using a tool saves your muscles and helps eliminate streaks and swirls. Choose a low-speed buffer, not a high-speed sander, for better control. Tools with an orbital motion are less likely to leave swirling streaks.
If you’re using a buffer, start at the slowest speed. Touch the pad lightly to the surface before starting the buffer so the polish or compound doesn’t spray in all directions.

Choose an appropriate variety of boating wax. The variety of boating wax you use will vary, depending on the style and the surface of your boat's gelcoat. Keeping gelcoat coated with wax can help the gelcoat maintain its shine for a long time, offering a protective buffer between the coat and the water.

Collinite 885 is a commonly used and recommended boating wax, used also in surfing and for other purposes.

Collinite 885 is a commonly used and recommended boating wax, used also in surfing and for other purposes.

Use the same motion as with applying the buffing compound. As with polishing and compounding, you can apply wax by hand or with an electric buffer. Use the same circular motion to avoid streaking.

Different varieties of wax may come with specific directions, so defer to the product that you buy.

Exercise care around fittings and in tight spaces. Regardless of whether you use an electric buffer or a hand buffer, work by hand around non-removable fittings to keep the buffer from catching on or damaging them. Do the same in tight crevices.

Remove fittings ahead of time if possible, keeping the screws with the fixtures closely, so you won't get confused later.

Allow the wax to dry. After a small amount of time, the wax should start to look somewhat hazy, which means you're ready for a second buffing. It's important to allow the wax enough time to set, so it'll be able to protect the gelcoat. This should only take 5-10 minutes in the sun.

Buff the wax to a shine. Use a soft towel or terrycloth bonnet if you decide to use an electric polisher, or a clean hand buffer and work in circles. The shine should really start to pop as you buff away the cloudiness of the wax.

A Very Early Maori Canoe

A sizable component of a large canoe found in New Zealand gives clues to the type of boats used to settle the islands, which probably occurred sometime between 1050 and 1250 CE. Found at Anewaka, on the northwest coast of South Island, the artifact has been dated to around 1400. Given the slowness with which technology changes in traditional societies, it seems probable that the boat it came from was similar to those used by the islands' first colonizers.

Canoe fragment recovered at Anewaka, New Zealand (click any image to enlarge)

More than 6m long and 85cm wide at its widest point, the part was a piece of what must have been a large composite canoe. For convenience, we'll call it a plank, though it was carved "in the round," following the shape of the tree trunk from which it came, and it is therefore somewhat closer to dugout technology than to plank-on-frame boatbuilding. (The proper term for this kind of component is ile.) The boat was, however, by no means a dugout. The part represents less than one quarter of one hull which may have been from a single-outrigger canoe but was more likely half of a double canoe.

Stitching holes exist around the entire perimeter of the plank, and pounded tree bark that was used to caulk these holes was recovered from some of them. Carved ribs and a longitudinal stringer on the inner surface of the plank show sophisticated carpentry and structural design. The stringer has notches and lashing holes along its whole length which were obviously used to locate and lash other parts of the boat's structure, but the exact nature of those other parts and the connections between them is unknown.

Partial hull reconstruction through duplication and mirror-imaging of the single recovered plank

The authors of a paper on the find suggest that the part would have had a mirror-image to itself opposite, plus a similar pair of parts extending the hull at least a comparable distance from its butt end. To avoid having the mirror-image parts meet along the hull's "keel" line, where lashings would have been exposed to rapid wear when grounding the boat (an arrangement that, the authors state, is unknown ethnographically), it is necessary to accept another part between them -- call it a keel plank if you will. Although the two ends of the hull need not have been identical, it seems fair to assume that they were of similar length. There is nothing to preclude more sections between the two end pieces, for a much longer hull.

Carving of a sea turtle on the Anewaka canoe plank

Carving of a sea turtle on the canoe plank

A sea turtle appears carved in relief on the outer surface of the plank. If one assumes that it is depicted swimming forward, then the plank must be from the after part of the hull. Sea turtles are not important in the iconography of the New Zealand Maori, so its carving here is thought to be a lingering transmission from pre-colonization Maori culture, which arrived in New Zealand by way of the Society Islands.

Proposed reconstruction of the Anewaka canoe as a double-hulled voyaging canoe with a single oceanic sprit rig

Relying on internal and ethnographic evidence and historical records, the authors created a reconstruction showing a double-hulled sailing canoe with dissimilar ends, a house aft of amidships, and a steering oar. The single sail is an inverted triangle held by two spars: known as an oceanic sprit rig, this is a tacking rig.

A Tahitian tipaerua, drawn by John Webber

As the authors note, the Tahitian tipaerua has a similar hull configuration, though the sailing rig depicted by John Webber on James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific was different. The authors suggest that the Anewaka canoe and the tipaerua had a common ancestor.

Thanks for Yoram Meroz for alerting us to this item.

With the exception of the final image, all images are from An early sophisticated East Polynesian voyaging canoe discovered on New Zealand's coast by Dilys A Johns, Geoffrey J. Irwin, and Yun K. Sung.

How To Wax a Boat

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A Very Early Maori Canoe

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