First off, these last posts have been brought to you by Google Chrome. Why? Because Firefox is being a dink and not letting me post pictures. This whole blogging of a major project does not work without pictures. Sorry Firefox, but you're out.
So I might have gone a bit crazy yesterday. I spent a lot of time sanding yesterday. I also spent a lot of time messing with my shop vac to capture the dust my sander was creating. Unfortunately, the shop vac's fine filter does not stay in place, so my system was not successful. It was a classic grade A effort though.
When I started off yesterday, I was planning to sand the entire bottom of the boat. I then realized that I was doing WAY more work then I needed to, because I only needed to sand the areas where the bottom paint was cracking and flaking off. As you will see, that still meant a lot of sanding had to be done. The plan was to paint the areas that had flaked off or been filled/repaired before painting the entire bottom. This should make sure the bottom remains coated in bottom paint. Mostly this post will be pictures with a little description, rather than a novel about yesterday's antics.
If you're wondering about the Sea Monster shirt, when I was on the USM sailing team, we decided that we needed a new team name, because "Fightin' Sailin' Huskies" was just lame. Even though we didn't win much, we certainly had a great sense of humor about our sailing, and had a lot of fun not winning. One of my team mates silk screened these shirts for us. If you're wondering about the skewed nature of them, he happened to do it on a Friday night when he was drinking.
Two things about this photo:
One- Yes, of course I am flying a pirate flag from the boat. If you know me, this should be no surprise to you at all.
Two- See all the red patches on the bottom of the boat? Those are all spots that got sanded down because the blue bottom paint had cracked or flaked off.
It was even worse on the starboard side of the boat. Unfortunately the weather is not cooperating with me today. It is raining, so I am unable to paint the whole bottom today. Maybe I will get some time this week after work to get a full coat of paint on the bottom.
A note about the bottom paint: I am using a water based paint. This means that it is not oil, epoxy, or solvent based. It thins with water, it cleans up with water, and yet it still has 58% copper in it to keep stuff from growing on the bottom. Even better, it is supposed to be a multi-season hard ablative paint. It is designed to take the abuse of trailering, launching, and beaching, as well as being in the water more than one season. It is also water activated, so no sanding the whole bottom after a long winter out of the water. Throw it in the water and BAM, the bottom paint reactivates! Pretty slick, right? We will see how it pans out though.
This is my toe-rail cutout. I gel-coated it yesterday after a good sanding and trimming. Once the gel-coat sets, I can sand it down, and hopefully it will look like it was like this the entire time. Now I just have to do the other side and try to make it look exactly like this one. Also, as soon as I was done putting the gel-coat on, a bunch of crap blew into the gel-coat. Sometimes the wind is not your friend....
Jenny spent most of the time we were at the boat scraping paint, sanding, and priming. The entire V-berth is now primed and ready for paint. I did not even ask Jenny to come and help me, but she volunteered her day off to help me get the boat project off and moving. Not only am I a lucky guy, but she does good work! Also, with her working on the interior painting, it frees me up to work on glassing, bottom painting, thru-hull work, and other things. I have to say thank you to her yet again for helping me out.
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