So the bottom was a disaster in slow motion that I simply hadn’t planned or budgeted for. The original plan was simple: Slap another coat off Pettit Trinidad Ultima SR on the bottom before launch and splash.
And to think I believed I had a problem when Pettit “changed” the pain to Ultima SR 40. I was having nightmares of incompatibility. My problems should be so small, this was well before I noticed paint falling off in chunks on the bottom.
Over the winter I saw just that – several spots where the paint was gone with white showing beneath it. Presumably that was gelcoat, we had a bit of difficultly determining if it was gelcoat or barrier coat. But the paint was very, very rough at the waterline and had a couple of spots where it had just fallen off. this concerned me, I didn’t want to put 3-4 gallons of paint (at about $250/gallon) over a layer of paint that was falling off in chunks.
So we decided to soda blast, based on the mistaken assumption there was no epoxy barrier underneath.
A brief technical aside – just in case my mother is reading this. Fiberglass boats can get “blisters” which as the name implies is a bubbling up of the outer layer or “gelcoat”. The risk of this can be lowered by applying layers of epoxy paint to the gelcoat before any bottom paint is applied to create a “barrier coat” to protect the bottom from direct contact with the water. This is a normal process for boats and most high quality boat builders will recommend it if they do not deliver the boat with the epoxy barrier coat on.
Apparently Sweden was closed when we were trying to get information on whether Evenstar was barrier coated or not from the factory. A U.S. Hallberg Rassy dealer thought they were not. He was wrong.
The soda blasting removed all the paint, and also left traces of gray stuff which we found out later was “Hempel’s Light Primer”, an epoxy barrier paint. Oops. Our original thought was to blast off the paint and repaint, and maybe after two years sand off that paint and barrier coat. Too much money being spent this year. Hoever Hallberg-Rassy, when I finally reached the, most emphatically recommended reapplying barrier coat before painting.
Then we noticed a lot of pinholes, which pretty much sealed the deal on doing an epoxy barrier coat.
So once again the yard bills are creeping up.
We eventually arrived at a PLAN to get this together with as little bloodletting my me as possible as I was already hemorrhaging money all over the electronics project (and paying my tax bill, remodeling the house to prep it for sale, paying school bills, etc. etc.). The plan involved sanding, epoxy and bottom paint in various combination with me crying and whining about the price the whole way. It also involved glassing over a through hull and changing another ( from the Electronics Project). It was a nice plan, and we said let’s GO!
As Bugs Bunny said on the moon when asked if “all systems are go” he replied “no, everything is sort of stop.” Which is what happened after the plan was made…we sat for a week after sanding was finished. Weather was a factor as well as commitments to other boats without last minute “holy crap I don’t want to have to pay for this sh*t” emergencies I suppose; good planning always helps and this was not an example of it.
So with weather cooperating we got some barrier coat done yesterday. And today the bottom got it’s first coat of dark blue paint.
The current plan has the last coat of bottom paint going on this weekend. The launch target is now late Monday or really early Tuesday. With luck I will have a rig soon thereafter, then we can deal with the rest of the commissioning and get out for Memorial day.
