What Goes Into Making The Best Boat Soap?
When it comes to caring for your boat, the phrase “what is the best…” arises in almost every conversation. Boat owners only want what’s best for their pride and joys. Today we’re going to dive into what makes the best boat soap.
Like anything the word “best” is subjective and what is best for your needs may not be best for the boater one slip over. Let’s jump in and find the best boat soap for you and your boating needs.
How Do You Plan On Using Your Boat Soap
In this day and age marine soaps have become highly engineered. They include different additives, surfactants, and resins to harness certain powers.
You have your original pure PH Neutral formulas, which contain no additives or polymers. These types of soaps are best when you’re looking for a purification wash. They provide big cleaning power and are an excellent choice when you’re polishing a boat. Even just routine weekly maintenance will work perfectly with a traditional PH neutral boat wash.
A traditional boat shampoo will usually work well in a foam gun or foam cannon if you’re looking to foam down your boat.
But if applying boat soap via a foam gun is your primary goal. There are shampoos with this feature in mind. Look for a boat soap designed to have high foam stability.
Maybe for you, the best boat soap is one that adds protection, such as a wash and wax boat soap. Something like our Bubble Bath,which contains SiO2 (or silica) the primary ingredient in ceramic coatings is an excellent choice for a boat soap with a protection element.
One thing to note with some protection-based boat soaps is that they may not foam as much as traditional soaps. The resins used to infuse silica or wax into the formula will decrease the foaming powers a little.
What About Using Dawn? I Hear That Cleans Great
There’s only one instance where using Dawn makes sense! When you want to strip off any old waxes, sealants, and oils from polishing. Dawn by nature is a degreaser and degreasers will remove any wax or polymer sealant you have on the boat.
Dawn is an excellent choice for a pre-ceramic or graphene coating wash when you want to remove any oils and residues left on the boat. But when it comes to maintaining a boat throughout the season it is not the best option for a good boat soap.
This is the only time I would recommend using Dawn as a boat wash option. Even so, there are strip washes specifically made to remove oils, and waxes. These soaps won’t harm the delicate surfaces on your boat.
So before you move forward ask yourself, what am I trying to achieve while washing my boat today? This will guide you in the right direction for which style of boat soap to choose.
What We Look For In A Boat Soap
One of the biggest factors at YACHTE we like to look for in choosing the best boat soap for any project is lubricity. A highly lubricated soap helps to gently lift dirt off the surface. This helps to reduce the chance of scratching the paint.
The surfactants bond dirt with water to lift the dirt safely off the boat’s surface. This is done between positive and negative charged elements of soap mixed with water.
Thick suds does not mean lubricating, it’s important to keep that in the back of your mind.
Another key element we search for in a good boat soap is PH Neutral. Believe it or not, probably one of the most widely used soaps you may encounter on the docks may not be as good for your boat as you believe.
You don’t need PH to do the work. Higher PH’s will take an oxidative surface and continue that breakdown and do damage to plastics and rubber by stripping them of the oils, which give them their gloss. Keep that in mind, there are plenty of trim and sensitive materials on board you don’t want to risk harming.
One final thing to consider is concentrate vs non-concentrate. The old-school way of making soaps was to dump half the bottle of soap in per wash. Attempting to get any suds out the boat wash. But current technology allows us to put anywhere from 2-4oz in your bucket and have steady long lasting suds.
Reasons We Consider Bubble Bath One Of The Best Boat Soaps Overall
After countless hours of research, development, and testing in the real world. We narrowed down what we felt would benefit the most boaters for their boat soap needs. Thus, creating Bubble Bath the best boat soap!
Although the label says designed for ceramic coated boats, don’t be fooled! This boat soap works for any boat whether it has wax, no wax, or polymer sealants. Bubble Bath also works safely with other brands of waxes and ceramic coatings.
PH Neutral
We started with a PH Neutral formula. This will ensure no matter what form of protection you have on your boat; traditional waxes, polymer sealants, or ceramic/graphene coatings you’re not going to harm the protection you have on the boat.
SiO2 AKA The Wash And Wax
Next, we wanted to add an element of protection to our boat soap. That’s why we incorporated SiO2 into our boat soap. To appeal to both ceramic coated customers and boat owners looking for a wash and wax style boat soap. We wanted this to work with not only YACHTE’s coatings and sealants but other brands of ceramic coatings and waxes so anyone can use Bubble Bath.
We wanted to improve upon other SiO2 infused soaps by providing Bubble Bath with more suds than the competition. In addition to the silica resins, we ensured there was a ton of lubricity. We don’t want you scratching up that expensive beautiful boat of yours now!
After the initial wash, sheeting of water will be present. A few hours of cure time and the surface will contain the properties of a highly hydrophobic surface.
Can Be Used In Direct Sunlight
Something unique we factored in that the average person wouldn’t have thought to consider in crafting a boat soap. A boat wash that when used in direct sunlight won’t cause damage to the surface and won’t streak. By nature, most of us boaters aren’t fortunate enough to be able to pull our boats into a shop. We needed a soap that could be used out in the elements and not cause harm to the boat. This is often a pain point to many boaters, especially those applying with foam guns.
So you can allow the soap to dry and go back and rinse it off and you won’t have any nasty streaks left behind. Something that you may have experienced with other brands.
Foam Cannon & Foam Gun Boat Soap
Bubble Bath is a foam gun and foam cannon friendly soap. With the increasing trend and desire for boaters to apply their boat soap via a foam gun for ease of use, we made sure Bubble Bath will work in both a garden hose foam gun or a pressure washer based foam cannon.
Another fun fact about foaming before washing is it not only helps lift the dirt but will help to minimize any hard water staining before washing. We all know many boating locations throughout the United States have hard water – we’re looking at you Florida!
We added additional surfactants and lubricants into Bubble Bath boat soap because the protection resins typically crush the foaming abilities and we wanted to make sure we crafted a boat shampoo that can go in a foam gun.
Be on the lookout for our YACHTE Foam Gun Shortly!
Conclusion
Hopefully, now you’re armed with enough info to guide you with what the best boat soap for you is. Keep these ideas in mind and you’ll be happy with what you choose. Look for a PH Neutral boat soap that has a ton of lubricity and if you want some protection find a good wash and wax or silica infused boat soap. If you want to keep it simple go with a basic PH neutral boat shampoo or stripping down for a fresh coating go with a nice strip boat soap.
Also, check out Bubble Bath you won’t be disappointed for all your boat cleaning needs.