Fiberglass boats currently has basically occupied the small boat market, and it is very popular in companies and passengers with advantages of light weight, high strength, beautiful shape and a variety of colors.
However, for a long time, fiberglass boat maintenance has not been paid to much attention. Most manufactures don’t introduce maintenance tips in the product manual and user instructions. Many users lack of fiberglass material, performance and other characteristics, so many people believe that fiberglass boats don’t need any maintenance because they are high strength, never rust and have gel-coat layer of protection. That caused a lot of fiberglass boats service life is shorten due to lack of maintenance.
Glass fiber reinforced plastic is made of synthetic resin as matrix and glass fiber as reinforced material. It has similar strength with steel material, and it has superior performance of water resistance, corrosion resistance, smooth surface finish and beautiful appearance and integral forming. But it also has some shortcomings, such as small stiffness, poor resistance to abrasion. In particular, there are many factors affecting product quality (such as the quality of raw materials, technical quality, production conditions and environmental factors, etc.), which makes the difference in the quality of similar products.
Compared with steel and wooden boat, FRP boat has the characteristics of less maintenance, which is decided by the superior performance of the glass fiber reinforced plastic. However, glass fiber reinforced plastic likes all materials, there is also a problem of aging, but the process is slower. Even in the boat surface applied the gel coat resin form a protective layer, due to the thickness of only 0.3-0.5mm, in often friction and erosion environment will damage and the thinning. So fiberglass products need less maintenance rather than no maintenance, proper maintenance can not only maintain the beautiful appearance, but also to extend the life of fiberglass boats.
