Deb and I finished up the bottom paint around 12:30. Instead of taking on another project in the heat of the day we decided to give ourselves a bit of a break, grab some lunch, head into a nearby town for some ice cream, maybe even take in a movie. I haven't been off-site in more than a week. For an ex-airplane driver used to wandering around the country that is like being house bound. On my half day of leisure some thoughts come to mind ...
Hydrocoat "RED" isn't really red, it is more like a sandstone pink. And "BLACK" isn't really black, it's more like a dark chocolate brown. It looks okay, but not quite like I expected. The nearly three weeks of constant effort to get the bottom done seems like a lot. If pressed I might admit that Kintala is slightly more seaworthy than she was; after all the concrete void is now sealed. Supposedly the Chesapeake Bay water critters will find a poor purchase on the not-so-shiny new paint as well. Add that to the fact that the boat does look a far sight more "nautical" than she did - maybe the three weeks of effort were worth it after all. One thing is for sure; her good looking bottom makes the various dock scuffs on her flanks look much worse than they are. My operator's head tells me don't worry about it, there are surely more scuffs in our near future. My mechanic's heart says its time to break out the polish.
Putting paint on with a roller is a really cheesy way to do it. It doesn't seem too bad if one thinks of a boat as a house which, in a way, it is. But if one tends to think of a boat as a machine, like a car or an airplane or a motorcycle, then rolling on the paint definitely falls into a category of maintenance usually associated with trailer parks. There is probably no cost effective alternative. But I can't help but think that doing a better job of prepping and painting boat bottoms, using just some of the technology available with process and product, would eliminate all of the heartburn over "osmotic blistering". It isn't the fiberglass in the hulls, it isn't the water filled environment, it is just the low rent way we paint them causing the problems.
Kintala probably lost 0.1% of the speed she might have gained to the kamikaze bug corpses now embedded in her new paint. Some of them dove right into the leading edge of the roller which, I thought, was kind of rude. Most of them were corps bugs though, and so smashed into minute little specks that all but disappeared. (The spiders were another story.)
There is still a lot of stuff to do; prop, anchor locker, new anchor, wind vane, pull down the canvas, rig the boat - inside and out - for road travel, get the mast welded, sheaves, LEDs, SSB, VHF antenna, rigging repair and inspection. Then, someday, the boat will go back in the water and a bunch of this stuff has to get done the other way around.
I'm sure glad to be done for today though ... necesita el descanso.
Hydrocoat "RED" isn't really red, it is more like a sandstone pink. And "BLACK" isn't really black, it's more like a dark chocolate brown. It looks okay, but not quite like I expected. The nearly three weeks of constant effort to get the bottom done seems like a lot. If pressed I might admit that Kintala is slightly more seaworthy than she was; after all the concrete void is now sealed. Supposedly the Chesapeake Bay water critters will find a poor purchase on the not-so-shiny new paint as well. Add that to the fact that the boat does look a far sight more "nautical" than she did - maybe the three weeks of effort were worth it after all. One thing is for sure; her good looking bottom makes the various dock scuffs on her flanks look much worse than they are. My operator's head tells me don't worry about it, there are surely more scuffs in our near future. My mechanic's heart says its time to break out the polish.
Putting paint on with a roller is a really cheesy way to do it. It doesn't seem too bad if one thinks of a boat as a house which, in a way, it is. But if one tends to think of a boat as a machine, like a car or an airplane or a motorcycle, then rolling on the paint definitely falls into a category of maintenance usually associated with trailer parks. There is probably no cost effective alternative. But I can't help but think that doing a better job of prepping and painting boat bottoms, using just some of the technology available with process and product, would eliminate all of the heartburn over "osmotic blistering". It isn't the fiberglass in the hulls, it isn't the water filled environment, it is just the low rent way we paint them causing the problems.
Kintala probably lost 0.1% of the speed she might have gained to the kamikaze bug corpses now embedded in her new paint. Some of them dove right into the leading edge of the roller which, I thought, was kind of rude. Most of them were corps bugs though, and so smashed into minute little specks that all but disappeared. (The spiders were another story.)
There is still a lot of stuff to do; prop, anchor locker, new anchor, wind vane, pull down the canvas, rig the boat - inside and out - for road travel, get the mast welded, sheaves, LEDs, SSB, VHF antenna, rigging repair and inspection. Then, someday, the boat will go back in the water and a bunch of this stuff has to get done the other way around.
I'm sure glad to be done for today though ... necesita el descanso.
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