I bought a 1985 21' Scarab over the winter and I'm in the process of getting it all fixed up for the summer. The previous owner had a bunch of vinal letters and decals stuck on the side of the boat. I used a heat gun to remove all of the letters. Here's the strange thing. Usually when you pull off vinal letters, the area under the letter or decal is darker colored that the area around it that has been exposed to the sun. Well when I pulled the letters off of my boat (red), the spots were the stickers were is lighter colored than the red gelcoat that has been exposed to the sun. I tried wetsanding the light spots and re-buffing the lighter colored gel, but that didn't work. Why would the gel that was under the vinal and not exposed to the sun be lighter colored that the rest of the boat? How can I fix this?

i did the same thing but with a white boat, does the wet sanding usually work????......my boat has emeron paint.

imq707
send a message to speedoc (another board member). He is a fiberglass expert. Good chance he can give you some advice.
good luck! Gizmo

My guess would be that the surface under the sticker has remained free of contaminents, especially with a 15 year old red boat. Not to say that the surface of your Scarab is bad but just the exposure to the elements soils the finish. I had the same thing with mine and did do a little wet sanding and was able to remove a bit , but I was afraid of going to deep so I probably could have removed more.

Kinda Milky white ? Ive seen this with paint B-4. If water gets trapped under them

Try a good oxidation remover and buff. I did this on my boat after removing stickers. Cant even tell they were there.

I had the same problem with my red hull. I
didn't want to over work the light area and
damage the gelcoat. After 2 yrs. of boating
it's almost the same color now. There has to be
quicker way.