Small Boat Voyages

The overall appearance was a bit scruffy so a new paint job was needed at least. I divided the project in two those being the brightwork and the paintwork. I want to sure what I was going to find when I started so I told myself this was going to be s labour of love so time didn’t matter. All that mattered was a complete assessment, which meant removing layers of paint and varnish to see what we’ve got underneath, followed by restoration.

To assess I basically went all over the hull pressing with the handle of a knife, and knocking to see if there was any soft, loose or delaminating timbers. Apart from one small patch on the starboard at quarter that sounded a little high pitched when I tapped it the hull seemed to be solid. Visually the areas below the waterline looked a bit uneven so I’d need to get the antifouling off to know more. I decided to work from the bottom up so the first job is to remove the antifoul.

Conscious that epoxy was used to bond the layers together, I could apply no heat and no chemical to remove the paint. I tried different methods to see which worked best. First with a sander and then a scraper. The scraper worked hands down.

It was slow work. It took about an hour to do only a small 1foot square. And tiring too. I made some supports out of scaffold acro props so that the boat rollers could be lowered to gain access to the entire underside. I crawled under the trailer to get to the lowest parts.

All the lumpy bits removed the paintwork underneath was solid but even. Ready for sanding and repainting.