Hello....It's that time for us...we have procrastinated long enough, and are planning to repaint our deck.   I'm hoping others can contribute their experiences.  Though I have done much research I was hoping to find some fresh insight about types of paint, and ideas about how to prep the aggressive tread pattern molded into the glass.  My neighbor is using a SS brush on his power driver, and that seems the best way so far...in addition, I have numerous stress cracks (Crazing) Bud ID'd as cosmetic.  I would like to repair this now as part of the prep for painting.  I would love to hear opinions and product suggestions.  

I finally painted my deck/cabin top due to gel coat crazing over the years.  I used a two part epoxy paint with a base of compatible high fill primer.  It took a few coats of primer (spray, sand & fair, spray again, etc.) to get the surface prepped but a good primer is all you should need for the crazing.

I would really disagree with the notion that primer / paint is all you need to fill the crazing . If you are going to invest time and money in a 2 part paint job you only want to do it it once . Think of it, if the crack is cracking it's gonna keep cracking paint won't stop that .The proper way to fix a gelcoat crack is to first grind it out , then what ever flavor filler you want , then primer / paint . A boat next to me had a Awlgrip job done , it was a Cal from the mid 60's . It is a very classic looking boat, and had a back ground of doing some Trans Pac's .  The shop that got the job to fix her up has a excellent reputation for doing glass work and Awlgrip . Here is how they did it, first just a general sand , then they ground out the crazing being careful not to gouge and then fair out the little valleys , they then wetted out the grind area with thinned Westsystem epox. then before that dried they put in a West epox mix added with a fairing compound type filler . When that was all sanded smooth , then primer / paint. That was 2 yr's ago it still looks like they did it yesterday . For the nonskid they did the same thing but they put a type of sand on the wet paint and then painted over that . Plus all was done with brush .

About five years ago I refinished Tamzin's deck using Perfection and strickly following the manufactures instructions.  The large cracks and dings I did fill with West epoxy/filler but left the fine crazing lines to be filled by the primer/finish coats.  The job came out beautiful but now five years down the road the really tough places like the curve surface between the cabin sides and deck are starting to show some very fine lines.  I assume that since Perfection is a very 'brittel" product that any movement at all in the underlying structure probably causes a crack.  Basis my experience I would suggest following the recommendation from the prior post about using West epoxy + filler on the crazed areas as well and then sanding as this would seem to stabalize the subsurface.

I used a Rhinohide product on the non-skid surface and it really works great and is super easy to apply.  From a non-skid perspective its almost dangerous the way your feet just seem to 'stop'...........The product achieves this by including ground up rubber in the paint which did wear down in the insuing years but again it was a one-morning job to re-coat the surface.

Good luck Anonymous, keep us posted !

Larry, that Rhinohide  sounds good . I all most wish I had to re do my non skid .