Sanding and Keel grinding...

Wow, what a job! There were 3 discernible coats of bottom paint under there, who knows how many were actually there. So, turned out it was easier to sand it all the way back down to the factory gelcoat than to try to get her through evenly to one or another layer.


Turns out that the boatyard has a TON of environmental regulations about how to prep and paint your boat... and what sorts of things can and cannot be done. The keel of this little boat was nothing but old paint and rust... so it had to be ground back down to the original steel in order to get the bottom paint to adhere properly. Unfortunately for Phillip, the regulations require that the area being ground be walled-off to prevent all the fly-off from the grinder from .. well, flying off (into the environment and the sound).

Hence the plastic wrap. You can also see in this shot the bottom is nearly prepped for paint, all down to gelcoat. Poor Phillip spent almost 4 days in that little plastic tent grinding through 20+ wheels before the keel was finally ready for paint.


So, as one can imagine... one gets a bit dirty when grinding in an enclosure of that sort.


Here's another shot, can anyone say drag queen... lol.


Phil got a neat shot of me in my Tyvex suit... oh yeah, those are basically cheap overalls to protect our clothes and head from all the junk that flies around while we're sanding / grinding / painting etc...


So when you grind down to gelcoat... sometimes you wind up hitting fiberglass. So we decided to put a light coat of 'Barrier Coat' (BC) over the hull and keel. BC is basically a light 2 part epoxy that is rolled on just like paint.


More BC.


another shot...


and one with the bike :)


Notice the 2 shades of gray here? YES, finally on to the actual bottom-paint...


That's all for now. We've actually finished the upper part of the boat too, above the waterline. It got the final coat of paint yesterday and is curing. I'll post up some shots of that along with shots of the boat going back into the water sometime in the next few days.