Painting - Hull

Preparation is always the key to a good paint job, (as well a being a bad pun). This is why many hours, days, weeks (some of which I spent in Russia) have been put in to sanding and priming the hull both above and below the water line.

Firstly below the water line with 6 coats of International Primocon brushed on and sanded smooth every other coat.

The next step, above the waterline, has been much more interesting, well interesting enough to take some pictures. 4 coats of International Yacht Primer we applied, two thinned and sprayed for a key then two brushed to build thickness. Next a long board was used to flat the surface over a large area, the high spots revealing themselves as bare wood.

This process was repeated with a further two coats with some pretty good results, I've been reluctant to use any fillers over large areas as I worry any movement in the wood would risk cracks, where as a one part primer is more flexible and lends itself very well to being flatted out.

And to keep my painting guru (also known as Geoff) happy this is my dedicated primer gun, a suction fed DeVilbiss, because it holds more paint.

Next steps involve two coats of International Pre-Kote undercoat intertwined with more long boarding but this time with finer grade sand paper. Followed by 14 days ageing, (most of which I'll spend in Australia) before applying two coats of delicious Mediterranean White.

Engine In

With the bilges all lovely and white it was time to fit the lovely and white engine. Which all went rather well really.

Painting Continues

Painting the bilges continued thoughtout the rest of the bilges and the first two coats were brushed on using our favourite brush the Harris T-Class Contractor, which also happens to be the cheapest, cool.

However a brush is still a brush and taking three people 5 hours per coat became tiresome very quickly so after flatting down with 320 I sprayed the next coat of primer followed by two coats of white Danboline Bilge paint.