How to remove non-skid

[Matt B.]

Hi all,

On my boat, the nonskid is a thin layer of some sort of plastic. It's firmly adhered to the deck - whether it's epoxy resin or some other adhesive, I don't know. At any rate, the nonskid is servicable - a bit worn in high traffic areas, perhaps - but not, umm, visually acceptable for the boat. <G>



So, my question is, how do I get rid of it? I'd originally intended to just sand it off, and wasn't really looking forward to it. If necessary, that's what I'll do. But I'm hoping someone has encountered this material before and can offer a tip on how to just peel off the material, whatever it may be.

[Tim]

Matt,

I've been looking at as many deck pictures of your boat as I could find, and I might be wrong, but I think you have standard molded-in gelcoat nonskid. The reason it appears to be an applique is because of the way the tooling for the mold is made: the plug, from which the female mold was built (which mold was eventually used to mold your deck), was constructed using thin pieces of a nonskid mold pattern which were applied to the male plug so as to be reproduced in the female mold. Since the plug (and thus the mold) contained an "applied" nonskid product, the signs of this are still present in your final molded deck (which is essentially identical to the original plug from which the female mold was made), leading to the appearance you suggest.

Everything in your photos leads me to believe this is the case, but photos can be deceiving, so if you've already discounted this possibility, I apologize. The worn areas show the laminate beneath, and also show signs of the light blue nonskid colod beneath the surrounding white areas where it's worn or sanded through.

[Matt B.]

Everything in your photos leads me to believe this is the case, but photos can be deceiving, so if you've already discounted this possibility, I apologize. The worn areas show the laminate beneath, and also show signs of the light blue nonskid colod beneath the surrounding white areas where it's worn or sanded through.

Well, that's what I had originally assumed - which is why I expected to be sanding it - but where the ventilator mount goes through the deck in the bow, the nonskid is lifted up in a separate layer from the gelcoat. I don't think I got a good picture of it - days when my wife comes to the boat with me, she gets a lot of pictures, if I'm on my own I have to remember to take them. <G>

Thinking on it, it's possible that I'm seeing the result of the rather poor job of cutting the hole for the ventilator, and the mounting screws just lifted the top layer up to give the appearance of a separation. I'll take a closer look next time I'm on the boat. It would explain things like the blue-but-not-nonskid of the lazarrette lip and similar areas.

[dkall]

it just isn't fun. After doing the all the molded in nonskid on a 42 ' boat if I had to do it again..... I would buy or rent a peeler and peel it off with a vacuum hooked up to it. Then repair any problems and refair the surface. After that is is prime, sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, paint, sand, paint, tape, and paint. That's about it.

[Matt B.]

it just isn't fun. After doing the all the molded in nonskid on a 42 ' boat if I had to do it again..... I would buy or rent a peeler and peel it off with a vacuum hooked up to it. Then repair any problems and refair the surface. After that is is prime, sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, paint, sand, paint, tape, and paint. That's about it.

Well, at least it should only take me half the time, right? That's the advantage to doing all this the first time on a 20' boat...

[Tim]

In truth, your 20-footer is more like 1/4 the size of a 42, so you're even better off than you think!

Be sure to build some comfortable staging around the boat for this sort of work. It's always worth the time, and being able to grind the decks from a comfortable position makes all the difference. Really.