Last summer my husband and I decided to upgrade our boat for something a little more kid friendly, so we ended up purchasing a really deep boat with a cuddy… Perfect for the kids, as well as fishing in those bigger waves that can sometimes pop up out of no where on the great lakes!
The boat that we purchased was not brand new, but totally new to us! In fact, this boat is actually a 1998… But it still looks pretty darn good, right?! When we launched our boat for the very first time, at a local boat launch, someone actually came up to us and said “Wow, that’s a really nice boat… It’s brand new, right?!”
Ha, that totally made our day!
For the rest of the summer we ended up docking our boat at a local marina about ten minutes from our house. Everything was perfect… Until…
We pulled our boat out for the winter and it had this very icky, and not so pretty, grime line on it, from being left in the water… I kind of wanted to cry, actually. The bottom half of our brand new (to us), boat was looking not so brand new after all.
I was pregnant at the time that we pulled it out of the water, so instead of trying to do something about it, we put it in the garage and I cried about it all winter. Like, seriously??! Yah-huh!
To my dismay, this summer when we pulled the boat out of the garage the grime line was still there. Probably even more set in now, than it was before. Oops!
After thinking long and hard about it, I figured that my most favorite cleaning product ever, the magic eraser would surely take it off! It didn’t. I was so ridiculously upset! Our boat looked terrible.
After doing some more crying, and a little bit of googling, I came across a few forums that said to try using blue Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner. I tried it. It worked!
Before I give you a step by step of how I got my boat back to looking brand new, I just want to mention that this is strong stuff, and you have to be careful with it! You will need to wear gloves, because it will burn your skin. And you don’t want to leave it on your boat for very long or it could do damage. This stuff actually ate some of my counter top in the guest bathroom, because I spilled some, and didn’t notice, until the next day when the counter top was all white and bubbled up… (I foresee a bathroom makeover in the near future! Wa-hooo!)
And although this trick worked great for me, I also suggest that you try a very small test patch on your boat before applying it to the whole area!
To make the process a lot easier, I poured my Lysol toilet bowl cleaner into an old spray bottle.
This really helped to evenly distribute the solution over the grime line, as well as make it way easier to get to those hard to reach places, like the keel and the draft!
You want the solution to be sprayed on as evenly as possible, and then you want to let it sit just long enough to lift up the grime line.
Then you need to use your hose to rinse everything off with water, immediately!
Here’s a before and after shot… Obviously the left side has been done, but not the right side.
What a huge difference, right?!
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Dad always swore by this while growing up! One tip however, don’t mix toilet bowl cleaners! Use one brand only. Dad tries that once and there was a reaction between the two brands!
Ahh, Candace! I never even thought to ask you! Of course you would have had to deal with this problem growing up on the river — Duh! And thanks for the tip for not mixing! 😀
Thank you!
Thank you so much for this post! I’m working on getting my boat prepped and cleaned for the summer and I just tried your method out and it worked great. I normally just get my boat cleaned by my local boat cleaner and they always to a great job, but this solution will come in handy to save some money!
Would this work on aluminum pontoon?
I found that Magquiers wheel cleaner works great too.