Nightmare

I had kind of a crazy dream last night. In the dream, I went to Greg's house to check on his dogs while he was on vacation. As I walked through the garage, I gazed at the boat -- and was instantly horrified. Greg had gone on some sort of crazy spree; he had sanded off all of the paint, and on the bow he had sanded back down to bare wood. On the sides he had fabricated some sort of space-age shaped add-ons that looked like the fins from a 59 Chevy on steroids. As my eyes adjusted to the horrific site, Greg nonchalantly strolled into the garage (it was a dream, remember) and casually asked me what I thought of the work he'd done.

I went ballistic and woke up. Thank God it wasn't real.

More Painting

Last night we applied our first coat of white paint. This is the paint that uses a cross-linker, and has a high-gloss finish, as opposed to the copper-infused stuff I mentioned previously. We applied the paint to the bottom, figuring that it's an area nobody will ever see, which allows us more latitude for mistakes. The roll and tip method seems to work well, but we ended up with a couple of runs. We noticed the runs after the paint had started setting, so we decided to let it completely set and see how well it sands. Wish us luck.

Baby's Bottom

Last night's session brought another round of sanding and fairing, and a second coat of the copper infused bottom paint. I also remembered to bring the camera, so here are a couple of shots of our progress...

This first shot is taken immediately after laying the second layer of bottom paint, though the picture doesn't quite do it justice. All of the white is a high-build primer. The bottom paint is the red in the back.

It's still shiny because it's still wet. Once it dries, it looks pretty much like your run-of-the-mill rust-colored primer. Either way, I'm pleased at the progress.

Before we laid the paint, I ran the random orbit sander over the starboard side, the bow and the stern for a final sanding, using 120 grit sandpaper. After laying the paint, Greg and I chatted, and we agreed that we will do no more sanding on these areas until we have placed a coat of paint on these surfaces. He still wants to do some additional touch-ups on the port side, which is fine because I agree that it needs a bit more work.

As I took the pictures of our paint job from the front, Greg asked me to post a shot of the skeg, so here it is. The skeg is constructed from a 2X2 strip of cypress (used for its highly water-resistant properties), with a strip of aluminum screwed into the top, after shaping the wood.

Important: According to Greg, copper and aluminum do not go well together. Apparently, they will cause a lot of corrosion. In order to prevent the aluminum strip from coming in contact with the copper in the paint, Greg was very careful to lay a thick coat of primer between the aluminum strip and the copper-infused paint. Please keep this in mind if you choose to mimic our addition!


Greg suspects that the addition of the skeg may reduce the maximum speed by one mile per hour or so, but he thinks (and I agree) that the increased maneuverability and handling will more than offset the decrease in top speed.

Next week, we plan to lay some white paint, using your standard roll and tip method. We plan to experiment on the bottom area. Since this is an area that few people will ever see, we figured that it's the perfect area to work out the kinks in our technique.

F*ckin' A!

Greg and I laid our first coat of paint last night! We painted the portion of the bottom and sides that will be underwater, and after being stuck in sanding and fairing hell for a couple of years, words cannot properly express the gratification that simple coat of paint brought us.

The paint itself was a little different than I expected. I expected a bright red, high-gloss finish. What we saw was rust-colored and had a flat finish. The paint was more watery than a latex paint, but it ran less and dried very quickly. Since I didn't expect to paint, I didn't bother to take the camera, so no pics. Next time.

Man, I'm stoked!