I've never compounded, polished, or waxed before. My last boat was painted with Awlgrip, so I really didn't have to do much more than wash. Wow, this is a lot of work! I feel pretty good though.
I plan to keep it up, but I'm glad I don't have to do it again for a while now. My body is pretty sore from the last 3 day marathon finish.
Collinite fleet wax does a nice job and seems to last the longest, at least down here in South Florida. I've played with just about every different wax on the market over the past 2 years. The fleet works well when you apply it by hand and then use a hi-speed buffer on a very low setting, like 1.5-2 on a Makita with a foam compounding pad on it. You may be able to use an orbital to take it off as well......I've found what used to be the gold standard the Meguiar's cleaner/wax in the blue bottle has turned to garbage over the past 5 years, but their new flagship cleaner/wax in the black bottle is pretty good, surprisingly it's only a few dollars more than the blue bottle.
I started off with the 3M paste wax. I was told to apply and then leave it for 30 minutes or longer to harden, then take off. It took forever to remove. The end result looked good, but there's no way I would get the whole boat done with 2 coats this way. I used Shurhold pro-polish on the hull and Collinite liquid wax on the superstructure. I still have to do the transom and swim platform, but the marina is doing some fibreglass work to the platform so I'm leaving this until they're done. I'll try the Collinite paste according to your comments. with the 3M pad, I was using the Black and Blue (softest) pads available. They didn't do much at all. I'll try with a more aggressive pad!