First paint

Well it took a long time, with yet a third ablation mixed in there, but I finally got paint put down on the hull.

One of the big decisions was to figure out what kind of paint to use. Again, the goal with this boat was to try out different things, so that I can make more informed decisions on the Big Boat(tm) I build next. One of the decisions I’d been agonizing over for a long time was whether to use regular ol’ house paint vs special Marine paint.

On the pro side:

• There are some small boat designers that supposedly swear by and recommend just regular house paint.
• It’s supposedly cheaper.
• It’s available in way more colours.
• It’s not like houses aren’t outside all the time in the rain and elements, right?

One the con side:

• Well, there’s an entire industry devoted to making and selling custom marine paints. They can’t all be wrong, can they?

I wavered a bit, but decided to stick with exterior house paint. So I choose exterior grade Aura paint by Benjamin Moore as my paint of choice, in semi gloss (or “soft gloss” as they call it). This is supposedly the top of the line exterior paint that Benjamin Moore makes, and a gallon of it set me back a little more then $150. That’s just a whisker cheaper then what a gallon of something like Toplac would have cost me, so the price difference isn’t really that much of a benefit tbh. It certainly did have way more colour choices though. I’m hoping it’ll stick up to abuse as well as the toplac does.

Prepping the Rudder and Assembly

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Before diving into paint, I wanted to finish prepping the rudder cheek assembly as well as the rudder itself so that they’d all be ready for paint at the same time.

For the rudder cheek assembly (what I’ll refer to as “the assembly” from here on) I needed to sand it smooth, then coat it in epoxy, then sand it to add a tooth to the assembly, before priming.

First task was to plug up the copper pipes so that epoxy and paint didn’t drip in there and make it harder for the lines to run.

Sanding some of the drips turned out to be a challenge, just because access was hard. I finally hit upon some sandpaper rolled around a dowel for sanding the inside of the metal collars free of epoxy/primer/paint, and this worked like a charm. For sanding the inside curved edge of the rudder cheeks, I had to tape a small amount of sandpaper over the end of a thick paint stirring stick and slowly sand away the drips (this took a while).

You can also see that I chose to cut the bronze collars a little long and leave them extended into the center. Since the assembly is wider then is needed for the rudder, I had room to play with here and by doing this I figured I’d reduce the rotational friction of the rudder since it won’t rub against the side of the assembly. This should also prevent the rudder from “wandering” side to side within the assembly, which likely wouldn’t have hurt anything, just looked weird.

Finally I primed both of them. Three coats of Pennant Primer, same as the hull. I was able to apply primer to the assembly all in one go by hanging it, but for the rudder I decided to just do one side at a time for some reason, so it took a little bit longer to get three coats on that going one side at at time.

And the last step, before painting any of the hull, assembly, or rudder itself, was to sand everything to add a tooth to the primer.

Painting

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The colour I choose was “Bold Yellow” code 336 for the hull (I had always been told that in a fleet of sailboats the ones with yellow hulls always stuck out the most - I guess I’ll find out).

I also wasn’t sure about putting a waterline on, but decided in the same vein of “this is the experimentation and learning boat” that I would, so I chose “Chrome Green” code HC-189 for the waterline.

When it came to painting I ran into a common problem - putting light paint down on top of a dark(ish) primer sucks. I’m not aware they make pennant primer in white, but gee after this experience I should have done more work to find out.

I was hoping for two to three coats being what was required. For the hull, I wound up putting five whole coats on (and contemplated a sixth). It was a journey.

I didn’t take a lot of photos of this, but below you can see the hull after I believe the second coat and the rudder after one or two. If you look closely, you can still see the yellow colour is showing a lot of the grey primer underneath.

Eventually I got enough coats down that all you could see was the yellow. I wound up using that entire gallon of yellow spread across the hull, rudder, and assembly. I even bought an extra pint thinking I’d need some of it, but managed to get everything done (just barely) with the first gallon.

Marking and Painting the Waterline

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I was going to use a laser level for this. I had bought one some time ago at the marine surplus store in PT, and this was going to be it’s first use. What do you know, it didn’t actually work. Projected a laser fine, but not a level one.

As it happens Costco had these for sale somewhat cheaper then normal at this time, so I bought one of those.

The challenge with doing this was that the boat needed to be level. I crawled underneath the boat and put my long level between the tops of the two sawhorses the boat rested on (it read level), and on each sawhorse (they both measured level), so the boat should have been level both sideways and fore to aft. That said, I could not get the laser level to shoot a level beam that matched up on the boat with where the plans say the waterline should be. It was as if the boat was pitched slightly up near the bow.

At any rate, I decided just to go for it. We’ll see when I put her in the water if she sits on her lines or not, but if the waterline rises too much near the bow, we’ll know the plans were right and somehow my long level and sawhorses lied to me (which might have been possible - there was foam on top of the sawhorses to cushion the boat, although I thought I accounted for that in measuring for level).

For the waterline itself, I actually wanted to paint about a three quarter inch waterline somewhere above the actual water line so it’d always be visible. I decided to raise the laser level about an inch above the measured waterline, tape it off, and then raise it another three quarters of an inch or so and tape that edge off. This would take the water line from the bow straight to the back corner where the transom and hull bottom meet the garboard panels.

For applying the paint, during the hull painting I started out with a brush application but discovered that rolling the paint on with a slightly thicker nap (say 1/4" to 3/8") from what a foam roller produces was the best way to get an even application. So for the waterline, I took a four inch roller and just cut it down to fit the width of the waterline, meaning I could roll it along the length of the waterline to apply. This worked pretty well.

It took three coats (probably only needed two) of the green to mark the line. When I put down the tape (you can see I used purple tape) I went over it with a plastic paint scraper to really press the tape down for a clean line. I also started with a coat of yellow along the lines hoping that if there was going to be any bleeding the yellow would get most of it. That said, there were still a couple of spots where the green bled through. Almost all of them happened where there was a slight crease along the painted edge - I was thinking those creases wouldn’t matter since I pressed the tape down using the plastic putty knife, but live and learn.

I’m not sure I’m going to touch up the bleed through to be honest - I kind of like that it signals “hey, this was hand painted”.

I also more fully understand how some people think that waterlines get bigger near the upswept ends of the hull. The vertical distance remains the same, but because the hull ends are upswept the line itself gets a little wider because it’s at an angle. At any rate, I don’t mind it. The alternative is to mark one edge using a laser level and then mark the other edge a consistent distance away from the first edge, regardless of level. Personally if there’s anything funky here I tend to think it’s over the lip where the garboard plank meets the hull plank, but oh well.

More interior sanding

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Other things that I’ve been working on now that I’m somewhat healthier is work underneath the boat while it’s flipped over, namely epoxying and sanding the underside of the transom cap preparing it for paint, a few fillets such as on the aft edge of bulkhead four, and filleting and sanding the joints on the roof of the cockpit cover.

No pictures here, but my first attempt at fillets on the cockpit roof was with epoxy with wood flour added, and I continue to find that it’s very difficult to get a neat fillet with this mixture. I’ve since gone back in and added a skim coat with SystemThree QuikFair, and at this point, based on this experience as well as what I was able to do on the hull, I’m a convert. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s quite easy to apply in a neat way, sanding it smooth is super easy - all in all it just saves a lot of time and produces a better looking result then trying to do it with straight epoxy and either wood flour or silica thickeners. Quik Fair is totally worth it (and I should still try to be neater when applying the initial structural fillet).

At this point I have a little more sanding to do underneath the boat, but I’m basically done there. I could apply a coat of primer while the boat is upside down to the surfaces that will be easier to do now, but the weather has turned and it’s now too cold for the primer. So I’m going to start building the spars and mast next, and I’ll have to decide whether I want to wait until warmer weather, prime some parts, and then flip the boat, or flip the boat sooner and just prime everything with it right side up, even though some bits will be awkward.