Poppy's Patina Wipe-On Gel Coat: My Review

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I'm posting this because if you go on the internet you don't find much in the way of reviews of Poppy's Patina Wipe-On Gel Coat, so I'm going to give my review here...
I have a 1977 Cee Bee Avenger model 165, also known as a Mach II. It is white with red metal flake and metal flake grey and black highlights. As you might know old-school metal flake was highly susceptible to sun damage. I once owned a boat where the whole deck above the rub rail was a tan metal flake and the entire gel coat on that was completely gone. On my present boat about half of the gel coat on the red metal flake remained, so it was salvageable. I went with Poppy's "Whole She-bang" kit. I won't go through the whole process because that's something you can look up for yourselves, I'll just highlight my personal experience. I will say they only provide a little more than half of the catalyst needed for a full quart of gel coat. I let them know this after the process; we'll see if the add more catalyst in future kits. Their email support was great. However, they don't have phone support, and there was a couple of times I wanted an answer "now" and I couldn't get one, so I had to wait for them to respond by email, which they do pretty promptly. If you have a question after hours they have an online bot that answers questions, but sometimes it contradicts what the human advice is. Nothing serious, but there it is. I let them know this, too.
I followed the prep instructions as closely as possible. I opted to mask off everything I didn't want to get the coating on - rub rail, cleats, lights, bottom of windshield, seats where they came in contact with the gel coat of the boat. I used professional grade half-inch wide masking tape for the rub rail, lights, and such, but I used hardware store-bought 3" wide painter's tape on the vinyl seats. DO NOT USE THAT FOR MASKING ANYTHING. It is cheap and after the process it would not easily come off off the vinyl of the seats. I had to get very aggressive removing the tape and tape adhesive that would not come up. I ended up using denatured alcohol to do this. Not the best for the protection of the vinyl, but after trying other methods I had to do this. If I had to do over again I'd spend the money and buy 3" wide professional masking tape. The wipe-on gel coat is touted as "self-leveling." In reality it's SORT of self-leveling. There's a fine line between having too little product on your application pad, and too much. If you have too little it will leave places that did not get covered by the product. If you have too much it runs and introduces bubbles. If you have too little or just right (a difficult place to find) the product sets within a handful of seconds. TAKE SERIOUSLY THE INSTRUCTION TO "NOT WIPE OVER THE SAME AREA AGAIN" IF YOU MISSED A SPOT. If you do that the area after you've finished will have obvious wipe marks. If that bugs you you'll have to sand/scuff that area after it's cured and re-wipe it on. Given the choice between too little/too much it is better to ere on the side of too much. The reason is that it doesn't set as quickly and you can for a few seconds re-wipe that area after squeezing out your application pad to smooth it out and spread it. You'll know when it starts to set. That area suddenly becomes "sticky;" when that happens, stop wiping there. The wipe-on process goes quickly!
The next day after finishing I went out and saw obvious places I missed, didn't have enough product on the pad, or had too much. This was especially obvious on the "hood" of my boat, the area in front of the windshield. This is the area that should look the best because it is most noticeable. I opted to put a second coat on the whole area of my boat above the rub rail, so I scuffed it up and re-did the work.
Conclusion? It turned out "okay." From 15' away it looks great - high gloss gel coat, color and depth restored to the red metal flake, etc. But as soon as you get right up to it you see the flaws - wipe marks and runs where it didn't self level, bubbles and material from the applicator pad that transferred and cured in the coating. But, it still looks way better than it did regardless of these flaws. Most of my boat is white, and that is probably the hardest color to tell if you got proper coverage. The sun light had to be hitting the surface just right for me to see the spots where there were flaws. After I re-did the above-the-rub rail section of my boat it looks pretty good. The hood now looks better than decent. See the pics of "after." Sorry, I didn't take any detailed pics of "before," but you can see the good and the bad of what I've been talking about. If I wanted to get really deep in this I would have sanded the whole surface after the first coat, recoated it, waited for full cure, then cut and color sanded it to get full gloss and smooth surface. For this old thing, that's more work than I want to put it.
I hope this is helpful to someone.