From land to sea, protecting your investments has been worthwhile for hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and now STEK is one of the first major manufacturers to expand our protection products to marine vessels. It’s no secret that boat maintenance takes a lot of valuable resources. From time to money, often both, maintaining your boat, ski-doo, or yacht takes intentional planning and continual effort. With the proper protection products like our Marine Protection Film, Ceramic Coatings, and Window Tints, that lift becomes a good amount lighter. Read on to learn exactly how STEK Marine can help you.
A stark difference between maintaining your automobile and your boat is the paint type. Automotive uses traditional clear coat, which cures to a hard layer, whereas boats use Gel Coats, which are softer and subject to more damage from the elements. Maintenance costs on boats only go up as the size of the boat goes up, and that doesn’t include any major damages from the open ocean, busy marina, or docks where it might be stored. With our STEK Marine PPF, Coating, and Tint, not only is the maintenance easier than caring for traditional gel coats, but it can also help prevent a lot of those costly repairs.
What are the most common damages to boats?
On the water, there is no protection from harmful UV rays. Those UV rays are often stronger than on land, and they reflect off the water’s surface, magnifying their intensity. The result is the gel coat being subject to fading and aging quickly, the interior of the boat, such as leather captains’ chairs, dash panels, and other plastics, getting brittle and cracking. There are also a handful of areas on any boat that experience regular physical contact, resulting in scratches or marring. Commonly seen: dock rash, scratches from wake boards and water skis getting moved about, or fishing equipment getting hauled across the deck. These all can lead to costly repairs and more time with your boat out of commission.
Marine Protection Film
The answer is simple: our AQUA SHIELD marine protection film protects any gel coat from those harmful UV rays AND serves as a self-sacrificial layer to stop those scratches and rashes from ever getting into your gel coat. This is a clear, polyurethane plastic that is designed to be extremely tear and puncture-resistant. The film has a high-gloss finish and a top coat. The top coat provides a layer of self-healing that acts like a membrane or body of water, where light surface scratches can be healed out with heat from sunshine or hot water. The top coat fills in any valleys or crevasses (scratches) to achieve a continuously smooth and flawless finish. This robust film protects the surface underneath, keeping your gel coat and high-ware areas in like-new condition.
Marine Window Tint
Our window tint also stops 99.9% of UV rays, not only protecting your interior and passengers’ skin, but also providing strong heat rejection to make things more comfortable onboard your watercraft. That comfort means more focus at the helm, and a safer journey for everyone. Like sunscreen for your windows, our AQUA SHADE window tint can also cut down on glare from the sunshine and is safe for glass and polycarbonate windows alike. This proprietary window film can be easily conformed to install even on curved surfaces without having to use heat, unlike traditional window tints. This makes it the ideal solution for boats and other seaworthy vessels.
Marine Ceramic Coating
Our AQUA COAT marine ceramic coating also protects against UV rays, very light scratches, and, most importantly, makes washing and caring for your boat a quicker and easier process by creating an extremely hydrophobic layer. This layer allows contamination, from sunscreen to fish guts and algae, to be easily sprayed off, rather than being scrubbed for hours. While our AQUA SHIELD marine protection film also offers a hydrophobic finish, our AQUA COAT will provide extra durability and longevity. Our boat coating can be applied to almost any surface on your ship, from the hull, bow, transom, and stern to interior surfaces. This coating creates a slick layer, and some studies show that it can even improve the boat’s efficiency and speed when applied to submerged areas.
STEK Marine – A New Line of Protection
The demand for marine protection is steadily growing, as is our installer base across North America. You can find a qualified STEK Marine protection installer on our locator here. Start your conversation and spread this education, and before long, your marine will have the best-looking boats around.
Photos and content of this STEK Marine blog are in partnership with Elite Marine Protection in Seattle, Washington.
