Ancient Boatkeeping Secrets

There are certain things on this old boat that I know must simply be tolerated. Some things are just plain old, and replacing them opens cans of worms that aren't worth the risk. Our hatches were well within this category. They had long lost their transparency, but they still are operable, they (mostly) don't leak and light can still pass. Since they still maintain their primary functions, an attempt at replacing them just so I can see the sky through them again seemed destined to create new leaks in this boat where there are currently none. So it has been, so it will remain. I thought.

Last week I was browsing through our copy of Aiken's Good Boatkeeping, a text we picked up at Half Price Books a year or two ago. I was flipping through it, not looking for anything in particular, when I came across a blurb that said Brasso can be used to clean pockmarks and scratches from plexiglass hatches. "Really?" I thought, surprised. Metal polish on a smooth, plastic surface?

I have no idea what could have caused the pockmarks on the interior of our hatches. They existed already when we bought the boat. I assumed it was some attempt at a chemical cleaning that had gone awry, and I never tried removing them with any other chemical besides general window cleaner. It seemed a recipe for further damage.

Yesterday Scott got a bug in him to polish the chrome stanchions and dug out the Brasso. Since he had it out anyway, I tried my experiment. On a small corner of the mid-ship's hatch, I scrubbed a small circular patch of Brasso, hoping that if I wrecked it further it would be in an inconspicuous spot, at lease. To my amazement, the pockmarks slowly disappeared, turning my rag black in the process. I continued on one of the two panels of the interior.

Then I went to the exterior, and polished the opposite side of the plexiglass that I had done inside, hoping to see a comparison with the unpolished side. The exterior had many more layers of grime and oxidation, but slowly a shine appeared where before had been a dull, dark grey surface.

I went back inside and looked out. I could see details! I could see the stays and the underside of the boom where before would have been only a dull shadow. It isn't perfect; it isn't like new, but it does look about 25 years newer than it had looked before!

This is the kind of knowledge that seems so esoteric, maybe because we are surrounded by folks with much newer boats that don't yet have similar old-boat issues, or maybe because owners hire boat detailers to fix things up so nice. Maybe people are just resigned to some things being old and looking their age. I don't know, but I relish every trick I find for returning things to their previous luster and beauty.