Ten days of pain(t), and no one has died. Yet.
The saga continues, and like POWs in the war on copper paint, we trudge along on our own private death march. . .
There is an old saying that "when you are up to your ass in alligators, it is easy to forget that your original intention was to drain the swamp". There is an analogous maritime saying, older even than the one about the alligators, almost as old as boats themselves, that goes "Maybe we should pay someone to do this job?"
I believe this saying was invented approximately two years after the first bottom paint was ever applied to a vessel, and was first uttered exactly seven hours and forty-five minutes into the first day of the bottom job, when the boatwright suddenly realized he was going to have to keep doing this again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and quite possibly the day after, and maybe even longer than that.
We've got the boat down to mostly bare gelcoat, cleaned up the fiberglass and put on the epoxy barrier coat, but this was no mean feat! Taking the paint off of a boat this size is a daunting job, especially the areas around the rudder and propeller shafts, and any other areas that have sharp, concave surfaces or tight corners, seams or or edges. We've run out of the chemical stripper, which we had been using to great effect, but was expensive. If we had to do it all over again, we would have bought three times as much, and used a pressure washer to boot!
[editor's note: It goes without saying that if you take a job like this on, make sure you have an adequate supply of chemical stripper on hand before you start. But the real important object lesson here is that if you do happen to run out, DO NOT hand a few hundred dollars in cash to your friend and ask him to "just pop out and bring back some stripper". Be very clear that you want C-H-E-M-I-C-A-L stripper. The other kind will not remove any paint, no matter how much additional money you offer her.]
AnnMarie wearing her "sailor's burka" |
[editor's note: It goes without saying that if you take a job like this on, make sure you have an adequate supply of chemical stripper on hand before you start. But the real important object lesson here is that if you do happen to run out, DO NOT hand a few hundred dollars in cash to your friend and ask him to "just pop out and bring back some stripper". Be very clear that you want C-H-E-M-I-C-A-L stripper. The other kind will not remove any paint, no matter how much additional money you offer her.]
The green gunk is the chemical stripper at work. Definitely made our job much easier, and if we had more of it, we would have used it. We couldn't get the other stripper to do anything except pout. |
Don't get us wrong, the chemical stripper wasn't a picnic either. It required scraping the layers of paint off, without gouging the gelcoat. That isn't nearly as easy as it sounds, and working overhead is a difficult, unpleasant job under the best of circumstances, like when you are being paid hourly, but it is not ever fun. When we ran out of chemical stripper, life went from bleak to black, or at least dark blue and dusty. We are now back to using, as they've come to be known by us, "those fucking grinders"*.
[editor's note: "those fucking grinders" is a registered trademark of SatansMaritimeHell.com, and is used with permission. Their motto "Tempting human souls is hard work; take the easy way out with those fucking grinders! Guaranteed to wreak havoc on the most saintly of souls. Over 1 million evil acts committed."]
We were originally (back before the tingling and numbness set in) calling them "Sea Flowbies" or "R2D2's Retarded Cousin", both of which sounded cute but didn't really convey the sense of dread we eventually developed towards them. Sort of like referring to a case of Bubonic plague as "A pocket full of posies". These really are god-awful machines. They are a silly solution to environmental concerns (especially frustrating because it seems the newer paints are significantly less toxic and wouldn't require such stringent regulations), and as grinders go, they are about as effective as the rhythm method. In fact, if the Pope ever had to grind the Pope Mobile back down to the Kevlar gelcoat, especially if he had to do it wearing a respirator over his zucchetoo, he probably would have been far more understanding about cursing, losing faith in God, and taking the pill.
Please, God, make it stop. |
The hull approaching whiteness. |
The adhesive is basically the crystal meth of grinding. Once you start using it, you can't stop. This isn't normal, BTW. You aren't supposed to ever use this adhesive on a Velcro backed grinding pad. You only ever put this stuff on when the grinder backing pad's little Velcro hooks have completely failed. Which seems to happen about twenty nanoseconds after you start using them.
At some point during the week, one of the grinder pads physically broke off, and the good folks at Napa Valley had to replace the head. The brand new backing pad worked for about two days, then disks started flying off of it. Did I mention that I hate those fucking grinders?
Tiny pock marks, probably from the original mold. |
I think that this may be the moral equivalent of those little plastic protector tabs for the heels of your shoes; the ones they used to try to sell you in the '80s, but instead of putting them on your shoes, this is more like having them stapled directly to your feet.
Applying penetrating epoxy. |
Before fairing back the epoxy. |
We got extremely lucky with our weather window. It was stifling hot the week before we arrived, and it rained the entire week after we finished, which was lucky for us, it also made working a bit easier. If you are going to try to do something like this, it is best if you can arrange for it to happen when the weather is warm, dry and still. If you figure out how to arrange the weather, please let me know.
One interesting discovery we made while doing this is that the leading edges of both hulls were covered in a reddish-brown type of bondo. At first I thought that perhaps this indicated some sort of earlier grounding and repair job, but Kelly seemed to think that this is typical of how these boats are constructed. We also found the same bondo technique around the area where the drive shaft log attached, as well as around the rudder base, which is pretty much every connecting seam of the hull, on both sides of the boat. I'm not sure what to make of it, if you have any similar experience or insight, please drop me a line.
The hull just before we painted the barrier coat. |
Once mixed together, you'll have a couple of hours before it completely hardens, so work quickly but don't rush. The paint comes in at least two shades of grey; we used three gallons of each color. If you are putting two coats on, you'll want the under coat to be a lighter color than the top coat, otherwise you'll forget where you've painted already. We're pretty sure there are some spots that four or five coats because we just couldn't remember, or were told "Oh, I just painted that area" by someone else. You probably won't get everything done in just one go and knowing where you were when putting on the second coat is crucial.
Our other hero, JD was a rock star!! An Amazon of a woman who worked hard and did yeoman-like work to boot! |
The bows in preparation for the the blue stripes. |
This was our first attempt at painting the keels orange. The white is the caulking we used between the keel & hull. |
The Village People song "In The Navy" now makes a lot more sense |
Pink rudders and keel. Don't ask, don't tell. |
We still had about three fourths of a pint of red, so figuring "in for a penny, in for a pound", we mixed that in as well. We now had a gallon of bright pink bottom paint. Pink. Not purple, not rose, not even lavender . . . but pink. Bright pink. The kind of pink that liltingly asks, "Hi Sailor, new in town?". Fortunately, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy has been discontinued, so we might just have improved our chances of getting rescued at sea. [editor's note: To all rescue personnel: if you see us clinging to a bright pink keel, please remember that we are grateful for your assistance, don't care what your orientation is, and that you look fabulous in that uniform!]
AnnMarie poses next to her stripes. |
Choose a bottom paint color that goes well with your complexion. |
John was about twice as fast with a paint brush as any mere mortal. |
Once you get enough paint back on the boat, you are ready to "splash down", as they say. This isn't nearly as exciting as it seems, unless you've forgotten to close a thru-hull valve. They will lower you back into the water very slowly, and it is a very good idea to have folks checking every single valve, thru-hull, stopcock, or flange (whether you've repaired them or not) in case there are any leaks. Don't let anyone rush you during this phase. If you have a problem, you'll want to find out before you float off the lift. It is much easier to be quickly pulled back out than to have to plug a leak.
Fortunately for us, we didn't have any (they developed much later on) but it is a wise policy to spend a few hours checking through the boat. We spent the night at the dock and didn't leave until the next morning, when we were quite certain that we weren't taking on water. Work done by the yard is usually guaranteed, but DIY repairs aren't, so be absolutely certain that you did the job correctly.
As it turned out, we were unsatisfied with the way the one inch diameter (unflanged) valves were installed (see our blog entry titled
Thru-hull Flange Plate and Marelon Flanged Valve Installation), and we ended up going back to the yard a few months later, hauling out again, and replacing them with a better solution.