2023 Life Logs, Day 141: Boat Bottom Painting
Date: Sunday, May 21, 2023
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High 68, Low 53 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
The never-ending story continues. It was another boat workday. It rained so hard overnight that I got up and went to the boat as soon as I could to assess the situation. What I found was a wet boat, top to bottom, that needed to be dry ASAP so that the bottom could be painted today. This was the crucial day when the last coat of base paint needed to be applied, left to sit for 4-5 hours to dry ‘just right’ before adding the first coat of bottom paint. The first coat of bottom paint needs to bond to the last coat of base paint, so both coats have to be done on the same day. I wiped down the deck. It is still under the winter cover, but there are tears in the cover and the wind blew so hard that the rain came right in. Then I started wiping down the bottom, then the topsides, then back on the deck to wipe down the outside of the toe rail as more drips were coming down. Heather arrived after picking Ollie up from a overnight birthday party, removed the tape on the waterline as water was trapped under it, wiped that down, and started retaping. Finally, the second base coat was going on.
The first coat was gray and the second one was white. You alternate colors so that as the paint wears off, you know which layer you are down to. After I did my part of painting the bottom of the keel, I took Ollie home and then returned. Heather was moving the stands so she could paint under them. It was 1:00 or 1:30 pm when we finished the base coat and broke for lunch, promising to return by 4:30 pm to roll on the first bottom coat. The bottom paint is black, and it went on smoothly.
Heather is using a water-based bottom paint, Interlux Micron WA. Good thing because both us got more of it on us than we had with the base coat paint.
Heather looked like she had a black moustache, and my hands were splotched with black. The black washed off my hands easily, so I hope the black on Heather’s face did as well. But the important thing is that the boat looked great, with the black bottom paint in all the right places.
When we were done, Heather removed the waterline tape line as I am returning tomorrow to do a second round of cleaning of the teak on deck.
That requires washing down with copious amounts of water. When that is done, I can start applying the teak sealer and Heather can reapply the waterline tape before she rolls on the final coat of bottom paint on Wednesday. There are MANY other things to be done before she launches on Wednesday, March 31, but somehow, I am confident that we will get it done … taping off and painting the waterline stripe, polishing the top sides, and washing down the mast, and on and on. Anything that needs to be done will have to be done by me, Jed, and the boys, as Heather leaves town on Thursday. But we have our marching orders from Captain Heather and I am confident we can get the job done.
