April showers bring boat decks to keep the rain out

I was mentally preparing myself for a slog of sanding, priming, sanding, painting. And so a slog it was, just not as long as I originally thought.

Deck prep

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I decided after all not to paint the cockpit yet. I’ve applied three coats of epoxy and sanded it, so it’s all ready for paint, but decided that painting first meant I’d have potentially more tricky cleanup to do if epoxy dripped on to a painted surface and hardened. So I just got ready for paint, without actually getting there.

I also got all of the hatch covers, the centerboard case cover, and the lazarette doors epoxied, sanded, and ready for paint.

The saga of paint

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In prep for painting the hatch covers et al (I really just wanted to finish them to get them out of the way in the shop - they were taking up too much precious workbench space) I discovered that I had bought two cans of brightsides paint that was slightly different in colour - one was “Hatteras Off White” and one was “Hatteras Off White (1990)”. Even better, one was bought at Fisheries, the other online from a sale at West Marine.

Also, after discussion with the chief critic, it was determined that I really didn’t want either of these colours, but rather I just wanted a straight white.

Problem: I can’t return them.

I didn’t even try to return the one I got on sale at West Marine because it’s west marine. When I tried to return the other one to Fisheries, they told me that:

• Brightsides was now discontinued, replaced by Toplac (what?!? But you’re still selling it?!?)
• They couldn’t take my can back because I bought it too long ago (and it was discontinued)

Toplac isn’t even a polyurethane but rather an alkyd enamel. And this paint is bloody expensive stuff. And I already bought two quarts of yellow for the hull too. Shit.

So it’s a bit of a crappy situation. I now have two pints of polyurethane paint that will be hard to get rid of. For the white paint, rather then go with brightsides again, I decided to go with a local company and bought a satin White from Marshall’s Cove. Hopefully they’re not in the habit of cancelling product lines.

It is an alkyd enamel, which I’ve never used before (I’m used to polyurethanes only), but might as well give it a go and see if I like it.

Now while I heard polyurethanes don’t need primer to stick to (sanded) epoxy, I don’t know if the same holds true for alkyd enamels. So I’m running a bit of a test.

I’ve primed the hatch covers, the centerboard case cover, and the bottoms and sides of the lazarette doors (I also used the old primer I had, Epoxy Pre-Kote from brightsides, not the primer that Marshall’s cove supports. Geez I hate it when companies kill product lines). They’ll all get two coats of the enamel on top.

For the tops of the lazarette doors, I intend to paint directly on to the epoxy without primer - we’ll see how it performs.

Gluing up the deck

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Since the hull was coming together it was time to actually glue the deck together. This required moving things around quite a bit in the garage to make enough floor space for it all. Had to wait for a dry day so things could spill out to the driveway during the shuffle.

These actual puzzle joints were a little tight. I didn’t pre-fit, and I’m glad I didn’t, since I doubt i would have been able to get them apart for glue. As it was, a few whacks from a rubber mallet were needed on pretty much every joint to get them inserted and aligned properly.

The deck is now ready for a marathon glue up session.