Bottom Job -- winter 2010/2011

After peeling our Gelcoat off the bottom of Memory Rose in 1994, we fair'd the bottom and added 16 gallons(8 coats) of  Micron 2000 (A barrier coat system to prevent osmosis/as the original gel coat had failed and therefore was peeled.)

We topped off the grey barrier coat with 4 coats of Petit ACP 50 Ablative Paint and got 5 GOOD years of anti fouling service out of it.  It still looked great in 2000. We occasionally scrubbed the bottom to clean of the occasional barnacle or slime build up, but overall, the bottom stayed fine.

 Mid process of many tasks/rail removal, cap rail, bottom job, change of waterline, chain plates, glassing of hull to deck, addition of opening pilothouse window, bowsprit addition, closure of aft exhaust(went to side exhaust), modification of binnacle, glassing and application of Ceram Coat to interior of both water tanks, making pilothouse window trim rings(and Paint). and total boat fairing and paint.

In 2000, we hauled out to do some major modifications to Memory Rose.  Plan was to add new circular external chain plates(2 posts on this site) but ended up removing Teak Cap Rails and glassing the Hull to Deck together/cutting off the original lower rub rail(a foot below the cap rail on sides of boat) and adding a new Teak Rub Rail at upper edge of topsides as a 'True and Complete" protective rail.  This work of course then required refairing of the sides of the hull and a total repaint of the vessel..  Tons of work!

 Massive 53 week redo of Memory Rose.  Everything that could be painted separately  first, "was"!

When done, we sanded and prepped well for new bottom paint.   We started with ONE coat of  Interlux Micron Extra, paint in Red/Brown.  (Had one can of new red and one can of 'older' brown can).

[My problem was that the BLACK color we had originally used in 1994, made bottom cleaning difficult.  I could not see the boat's surface well enough, while diving under the boat. So I decided to opt for a lighter color.]
So, over the top of this Red/Brown color change signal coat, we applied 5 gallons of GREEN Micron Extra.  The thought was, when in the future I saw RED, I would know it was time to repaint.

 In 2004, while hauled out in Green Cove Springs, Florida on the St. John's River, we hauled again to repair missing paint around underwater metals.  I had had an electrolysis problem/now solved but needed to at least touch up bottom paint.

 Electrolysis problem ate paint .  Solved the problem , then opted for a 'repaint' of entire bottom in 2004.  Addition of davits and swim platform going on also.

 We ended up in the yard for much longer than expected as I stripped/repainted/rewired the Mizzen mast and other projects but also was hampered by 4 Hurricanes that came within 50 miles of us,  with winds of 65-75 knots.  This would shut down operations four times, for several days at a time.

  Here was the 10 panel forecast for HURRICANE JEANE coming at south Florida and running up through it. This was one of 4 Hurricanes to come close enough to the St. John's River in NE Florida in 2004, to have us pack up our gear to a storage facility 20 miles away and  prepare for the worst.

The one project that effected Bottom Paint, was my Raising of our waterline through hulls and Boot Stripe.

OEM Through Hulls were below our actual waterline.

So we removed old through hulls; glassed over the area inside and out and then added new through hulls 5" above the original position

Marking for New Waterline

 New Waterline
The New Green paint held up well, but the waterline suffered.   As we continued to load our boat with so much stuff, the water was often near or at least "wetting" the gelcoat above our Barrier Coat.  Wet gel coat on the topsides of these 30 year old boats tends to fail into small blisters just like it does below the waterline.  The fiberglass underneath seems to be fine, but the gelcoat blisters just the same as it did on the bottom itself.

This caused  a problem when "Scrubbing" that is always necessary to clean the waterline.  The scrubbing would remove the soft ablative paint from the top of the tiny blisters just Under our Raised waterline(which had no barrier coat).  Of course, this was exactly where New Slime would grow, so NOW,  it's time to redo the bottom paint even thought the 98% of the underside was fine.

Now at Shelter Bay at the end of 2010, we are basically stripping much of the Green and Red off and will reapply a new layer of Bottom Paint.  We had the boat hauled out in Late April 2010, here at Shelter Bay, Panama to let the boat totally dry out .  Now, I am hand scrapping the old Green off.

 NOW, it's Christmas 2010:   Much of this section 'hand scraped with 3" scraper and aft section of keel shown sanded with 80 grit & Disc-Orbital Sander.

 End of the day, Dec. 30th. cleaning up and ready for a hot shower!

Will fix waterline blisters by removing Gel Coat there and repainting Bottom and Boot stripe.  Hired a subcontractor (2 Panamanians) to assist me starting Monday morning for some of this tiresome labor.  For now, I'm scraping and sanding.  Hard, dusty, dirty work!

 Ran a hose from my Disc Orbital sander through our mini-shop vacuums hose into a bucket of water and covered the lid with an old T-Shirt.  This created a Capture System for much of the bottom paint coming off the hull.