Moraine State Park puts a lot of boats in the water every summer, and most of them get cleaned in exactly the wrong order: hard in the spring, nothing in the autumn.
Do it the other way round and everything is easier.
End of season is the important one
The week a boat comes out of the water is the best time to detail it, and it is the week almost nobody does.
The waterline stain has not set yet. A season of Lake Arthur leaves a brown band along the hull at the waterline. In October it comes off with the right product and some time. After a winter of sitting there, it is a compounding job.
The vinyl is still flexible. Vinyl seating that goes into storage clean and conditioned comes out flexible in the spring. Vinyl that goes into storage dirty spends five months with grime holding moisture against it, and comes out stiff and cracking at the seams.
Mildew has not had all winter. Anything damp that goes under a tarp in November is a science project by April.
What chalky gelcoat actually is
Run your hand along the hull. If it leaves white powder on your palm, that is oxidation — the gelcoat's surface has broken down under UV.
Washing does not fix it. It is not dirt, it is the surface itself, and it has to be compounded back to a fresh layer. That is why oxidation work is priced separately from a wash: it genuinely is a separate job, and it takes hours.
The good news is it is preventable. Gelcoat that gets cleaned and protected does not chalk anywhere near as fast.
RVs have the same problem, slower
An RV sitting under a tarp all winter deals with everything a boat does, plus a roof that nobody ever looks at. The difference is that an RV usually sits for longer, so the damage is slower and further along by the time it gets noticed.
Why we come to you
You do not tow a boat to a detailer. We work wherever it is parked — the storage lot, the yard, beside the barn, at the house. Most of this work happens around Portersville and the Moraine end of the county, which is a fifteen minute drive for us.
Over 24 feet
Anything longer than 24 feet is quoted from photos rather than priced on the page. That is not a hedge — it is that the difference between a clean pontoon and a neglected cruiser at that length is thousands of square feet of surface, and there is no honest single number that covers both.
Send a few photos through the booking page and you get a real figure back.