Wet sanding an older boat

I did a 22 footer a few years back, it's not that hard, just time consuming.

Remove anything you can that is bolted on, cleats, grab bar, etc. Consider new sticker replacement, but do not remove the old until you have the replacement. The old stickers will have a "shadow" behind them that is really hard remove. Remove old stickers with heat gun, plastic spatula, and some goo gone.

I avoided the orbital sander and went with hand sanding. I hit with 1000 first, but was not aggressive, then hit with 2000 for a longer period.

Sanding was the easy part, compounding took the most work. I got all my supplies from a local PPG store the auto body shops use. Used 3M compounding liquid and pads and well as polishing liquid and pads. Compounding and polishing have separate pads.
Obviously you need a good variable speed polisher, but be careful staying in one spot too long on high RPM's, you will make a burn spot in the gelcoat.

It's a 5 step process so keep beer handy.

1 - 1000 grit sand
2 - 2000 grit sand
3 - compounding
4 - polishing
5 - wax (twice)

Wet sanding, compounding, polishing and wax is done and the boat came out great. Much better than I had expected.

Next project is to repaint the engine. I haven’t started researching How to do it yet but if anyone has done this already and has any advise it would be greatly appropriated. Been trying to look up a paint code for Johnson 200 HP year 2000 to get Sherman williams to match but can’t find it anywhere.