Bleach based cleaners and gelcoat…
I get ten different answers, hoping somebody here can be definitive?
Not yacht, it is a 20 foot Speedster jet
boat - around 20 years old.
Gelcoat bottom, not antifoul
paint.
After 3 weeks in
salt water estuary, there is usually a slimy algae and occasionally tiny (like peppercorn) limpets. My usual product is Starbrite
Hull Cleaner, which works ok but it is a bitch of a process lying under
boat and applying it with a nylon & foam pad, but it does
work, taking care to follow that with soap and very good rinse. Its a active ingredients are 2-Butoxyethanol (basically a surfactant) and oxalic acid. It is very unpleasant when it drips in your eyes…
On some
forums people swear by sodium hypochlorite (essentially a bleach) in a soapy mix. Others swear by hydrogen chloride (pool acid) in a soapy mix. Bleach would to my mind def be bad for
steel.
I would kill for any suggestion that basically just means pressure wash worst off, dip brush/broom in wonderproduct, leave for x minutes, then pressure wash off.