I've found the best way to refinish hulls back to factory shine is the following:
Fill all scratches & dings with 3M Fairing Compound, sand smooth with 120 grit 3M Sandblaster dry sandpaper (doesn't clog)
Spray gel coat on visible repairs, sand smooth with 120 grit dry (be careful not to sand through).
Starting with repaired areas, and increasing the sanded area as you go up in grits, wet sand with 320, 400, 600, 800, 1000 grit by hand (use a rubber sanding block on flat surfaces). On the last two grits, you should go over the entire boat.
Using a machine polisher with a fleece head, go over the entire boat with 3M Heavy Duty Rubbing Compound. By now, the boat will have a nice shine, but you're not done yet.
Again using the polisher, this time with a foam head, use 3M Finesse-it II polishing compound on the whole boat. When you're done, the boat will shine like a mirror.
To preserve the shine and seal up the gel coat (it's porous), use 3M Liquid Marine Wax. To save your arms, you can use your orbital buffer to polish it.
I've found that the orbital buffers sold at Home Depot and Lowes don't have enough power to effectively compound the boat. Doing it by hand is brain damage.
You need a good, rotary polisher to do the work:
DO NOT USE AN ANGLE GRINDER FOR THIS JOB. The speeds are wrong and you'll burn it out. Been there done that (three times). I got my polisher from Auto Zone for about $60 and it's been fine.
To do a 16 with this method (and it doesn't need a whole lot of repairs) will take you an entire day. In addition to a boat that looks like new, you'll have arms like Hercules when you're done.
