Gel Coat Stained... Help

[crashkahuna]

I would try Barkeepers Friend or acetone. Dish soap and rinse after. Maybe Diamond Magic but it is more abrasive.

[S/V Antares]

GFo to the Dollar Store or grocrey and buy a few quarts fo cheap lemon juice for a frew bucks a bottle. Spray or wipe it on and let sit for a few hours.

Clean off and wax on . Done. Great for ICW "Moustash" brown stain. Try it. you will not believe how well it works untill you do.

[casual]

Marykay hull and bottom cleaner,NOT SPRAYED,wipe on carefully let sit rinse,keep away from metal.

[bahamarich]

Bill I have had great results using 'Real Lemon' lemon juice full strength on the stain and letting it sit for five minutes. Then using 3M cleaner wax. Good luck, you know how I like white shinny top sides, I feel your pain Rich

[Captain Bill]

This is a seriously old thread, but the acid approach was the right solution. Oxyclean removed most of it but not all of it. Sunlight took care of most of the rest. What finally got the last of it was a phosphoric acid wash. Our andchor chain rusted badly last year in the bahamas as the galvanizing gave up after 10 years. The result was a badly stained foredeck (rust stained). We were looking for solutions to that problem and found that phosphoric acid took it off and left a nice white deck. Unfortunately I had only a small amount available at the time and could not treat the whole area. when we got back to the states I bought some Krud Kutter phosphoric acid at Lowes. I diluted about 3 to 1 and sprayed it on with a garden sprayer. I let it sit for 30 minutes, rinsed it off and the entire foredeck was lily white. It was only then that we realized that we still had some stain left from the boat yard incident as the unsprayed area still had a slightly reddish hue. When there was no pure white next to it the stain was not that noticable. So I bought some more and sprayed the entire boat. Now it's so white it hurts my eyes on a sunny day. I imagine that lemon juice or muriatic acid might have been just as effective, but I was a bit reluctant to use those as I have seen what HCL does to metal and to be honest hadn't even thoght of the lemon juice. Phosphoric acid is commonly used to remove rust so I wasn't too concerned about the metal and any rust removal from my boat is a good thing. It even took the rust stains off of the side of my boat from the not so stainless steel ports. My boat might even be allowed out of New Zealand now.