I told Keith on the phone today that the boat is finally almost done, and yet the list of things to do seems to be growing! Kind of stressful. “The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away…” (Thanks to Paul Simon for sticking that one in my head all evening)
Maybe we’ll spend time this weekend separating the punch list in to pre-transport vs post-launch tasks. We don’t really need the boat in the workshop to make the freezer lid or test out the self-steering windvane installation. Let’s get sailing and sort the niceties out during the summer.

Good news is that we won’t slip-slide on deck. Finished the whole topsides non-skid job tonight. Here’s how the past four evenings were consumed.

After wet-sanding at 320 grit the entire deck and cockpit first coat from last week, we set out to mask the waterways (smooth parts) to delineate all the non-skid. No rulers or tape measures – just consistent distances from edges provided by sliding a couple of paint sticks around.
Then to round off all corners, Mrs.Carter came aboard (finally found a non-itchy / non-nasty job in the shop!) to cut 1/4 rounds using a 1.5″ circle.

She would cut about 10 ‘moons’ on the cutting board then we lifted the edge and transferred them to the deck where needed. (Leaving no knife marks in the paint the way it’s often done). Must be a hundred or so of those little buggars done. There
were both inside and outside curves to do and this extra couple of hours made the job look much better.

With the masking done it was time for another solvent wipe before rolling on the same Interlux Perfection “Off White” but this time with Awlgrip’s nonskid plastic beads mixed in. This is definitely something to practice off the boat; tricky to get the bead mix ratio and roller saturation right for an even distribution of grit on deck. We had this learning curve on the beams months ago. Once the paint and beads are mixed in your bucket, only pour small amounts at a time in the roller tray so you can frequently stir the bucket and refill the tray – keep those particles even suspended in the paint.
The Second coat went on late today and it all looks good, and I like the texture. It’s pretty aggressive, but that is intentional because there’s so much slope to these decks that we’re scared of loose footing.

It should be fun for the Saturday morning unmasking, then we’ll finish painting all the gloss areas of the white portions of the entire hull. Might get to start the platinum grey below-the-nets topsides by Sunday afternoon.

(Did anybody notice the jib car tracks are running across the deck, not longitudinally? Thx to a wise old tri mariner)

While deck paint dries we’ve been working paint steps of all those loose parts. Here’s the boom after all it’s final sanding, getting a black “don’t look up in here” treatment to the open underside. (Recall months ago we’ll run the outhaul and reefing systems inside but with easy access, which Lenneman will totally approve :)

This one’s for Schildknecht

THAT tasted good after seven hours of painting the deck and cabin top today!

Four and a half years of looking at raw fiberglass and carbon, parti-color fairing putty, various primers, sharpie pen marks and general grunge… And tonight it’s magically replaced by a decent looking boat. Phew!

Of course there’s a ton more work to do. That’s the first coat, and we had a bit of trouble from cleaning the surface with mineral spirits, not the expensive Interlux 2333N thinner. The paint started orange-peeling so it took some fussing with re-rolling as it began to get tacky. That mistake was corrected by re-wiping the whole project again. And we had roller problems; as the paint got closer to its curing time or the roller cover was on more than a half hour, the solvents began to eat the foam roller. So we have little bits of crap to sand off in a day or two. I have some (supposedly) solvent and epoxy-proof rollers on the way. And we’ll try the ones Andy Miller text-reco’d this afternoon. (Y’all can search back on this site about 1.5yrs for Andy’s F22 Dart launch party). Dart is up in Washington now, but seeing her splash that first day has been motivating our work for a long time now. Yes Andy, almost…

Thank you to Mrs. Carter for spending her weekend keeping the Homefront gardens in lovely order. The boat builder seems paint obsessed, shirking yard work duties. Divide and Conquer, I suppose. Thanks honey!

How many times have you heard, “a good paint job is 90% about the prep”? I guess that makes tomorrow our moment of truth, as there’s nothing left to do but start rolling & tipping the deck on a fine April Sunday. The whole exterior of the main hill is 220grit sanded down to the waterline.

It took half of Friday and all Saturday to finish sand (and of course fill and re-sand three more little pinhole fields). That includes sixty bucks spent on the commercial painter neighbor’s assistant. He hand sanded the net lashing tubes all along the hull, plus the entire cockpit and windshield base, because I was just too damn sick of these picky areas that have taken too many amateur hours.

Along with the hull painting we’re trying to keep pace with all the loose parts. Tonight was another primer pass (and some fairing filler in spots) on these:

Tucked in to that photo are the 16′ boom, 6.5′ rudder, stern radar / windvane tower, engine bracket / sled, lazarette lid, and main cabin and aft cabin hatch covers. There’s not enough room in the shop to spread everything out properly, so we’re juggling moving stuff inside and out during the day.

Ok, we’ll watch more YouTube videos for reminders on roll&tip boat painting, and cross those fingers for a good looking deck tomorrow.

Never mind The Donald and Hillary and Bernie, etc. Over here we’re focused on finishing up the Primer work and starting the final paint!

As expected, laying on the primer paint exposed a number of little surface imperfections, so that’s led to quiet (non-posting) days of more filling and sanding. See the colored fairing compound ‘fixes’ above the primer paint layer:

The good news for us is that’s the last of it, and the second coat of primer, where needed, goes on this evening. Then we’ll sand it all down to 220grit and begin final painting the deck with Interlux Perfection two-part LPU. Off white for the deck (same as the floats) and Platinum for the topsides (same as the mast and beams). I just ordered some West Systems roller covers, as everything sold locally disintegrates with the solvents in these paints, leaving roller residue in the surface. We can sand that away at the primer stage, but it would be a disaster in the final paint. If anyone has an actual roller cover brand name personally proven to withstand marine two part paints, please let me know!

There was no boat building last weekend because of the opportunity for a coveted crew position in the Doublehanded Farallons race. Skipper Andrew Scott had F27 #277 Papillon ready for battle, and we pulled off a 4th overall, 3rd multihull result. We were faster and corrected out over all under-30′ boats. It was a day to prove ‘waterline is king’ as the F31R had enough length and mass over the F27 to handle 25-30kts and really ugly square wave seas still sailing fast. The two F27s that finished the course were at their limits. Hats off to the F31 crew, and I have no problem with 2nd and 3rd going to a $2mil+ Gunboat and an expensive carbon-rig 40′ J120. Surfing 25 miles home on the ocean, getting overpowered downwind even with double reefed main and jib, meant a tired crew needing recuperation, not boat painting for a few days :)
Maybe next year we tackle the course with 39′ in the water…

Boat parts in the driveway!

Just before thanksgiving we lost the shop neighbor’s storage space for this little trailer holding the finished beams. It’s been crowding the shop and now that we’re serious about painting, the trailer had to move. Seeing the beams in the driveway is rather motivating to keep working!

Three weeks of business travel caused a gap in boat work (and updates here), but we have a bit of catch up for you. Doing a solvent wipe down for the primer, we found a bunch of pinholes in the fairing along the hull topsides. So much for painting before the flight. Better to catch them now, under the primer. Look closely…

And the blue tape is the treasure map

They were fixed with a thin slurry of red-balloons putty; nice and runny with plenty of pressure filled the little holes.

And finally, we’re starting to imagine a painted boat. This primer is similar (but darker) to the platinum grey final color of the topsides. It’ll go up to the net lashing tubes.

This is probably about the fifth time I’ve said “one last little external build piece to go…” We had assumed the bow pulpit would be build in steel post-launch. But since we’ve been on the roll of eliminating metal, why not here? Now I want to get this done and glassed in before painting the deck. Here’s a mockup of thin glass that was wrapped around PVC.

Thinking we’ll carve this shape from styrofoam, glass that, then dissolve out the foam to form hollow tubes. If anyone has tips on this, or a better way to form the curves, we’re all ears.
Thanks!

This boat hull was built 15 years ago. The deck and topsides got a primer coat 5 years back, but some of you will recall the bottom wasn’t faired until just a few months ago. But tonight, a decade and a half late, the raw underwater skin was painted with the first of five coats using Interlux interprotect 2000. This will create an epoxy barrier coat over the epoxy-skinned hull, so blistering or other water intrusion should not be a future worry.

One more bow shot here to remind us where the Kevlar protective strip sits across the front. (You can see it as a vertical yellow shadow under the white fairing skim)

No boat should take this long to build, but what a great step tonight. You could feel the good vibe in the room – seems like the boat knows we’re sealing things up and sprinting towards the water. Anticipation grows…