Hydrocoat Update

There's an update on the Hydrocoat review on the tab in the bar above if you're looking for bottom paint.

I loves me some Hydrocoat

I think I've mentioned this in a previous post, but I ran a Sherwin Williams aircraft paint distributorship

for 5 years back in the early 2000s. We sold a water-based paint, or rather we tried to sell a water-based paint because aircraft painters are a stuck-in-the-mud lot and are petrified to try anything new for fear it will upset the paint fairies and leave them with blushes or blisters and a corporate jet repaint bill of $250K. In addition, after painting with 2-part polyurethanes for decades, they found it impossible to believe that any water-based paint could stick as well as their urethanes or look as pretty. It became necessary for me to send out samples to painters just so they could try it.  I began to get phone calls with the words, "Damn! Don't get this stuff anywhere you don't want it, because it sticks so good you can't get it off!".  So when I found out that Pettit made a water-based paint, one I could used without fear of getting a tumor or turning into a deranged blithering idiot from exposure, I was immediately on board. Today we put on the first coat and I became an instant believer.

The instructions are detailed and clearly written and stress the fact that all bottom paint performance is dependent on the substrate prep, so pay attention to yours if you choose to use it. That being said, it's one of the few paints that can go directly over VC-17, which some previous owner had chosen to put between two layers of other paint of questionable compatibility, a fact that I'm fairly sure contributed to the large amount of paint blisters we had. Hydrocoat can be applied by sprayer, roller or brush and we chose the roller method, not having the facilities to spray and not having the time to brush. The paint rolled on smoothly and dried quickly on our warm day (84° and 68% humidity), but not the irritatingly fast dry of VC-17 which means that two people can share a tray and work at the same time without having to do the antics of VC-17 application to prevent it drying
before you get it on the bottom in the typical Midwest summer heat. There is very little odor, and what there is has a pleasant, clean smell. Need to scratch your nose? No problem. Just rinse your hands under the hose and the paint washes off.  Our blue tape line on the waterline pulled clean and sharp, although we didn't leave it on very long per some forum suggestion I had picked up along the way of researching the product.



We only have the first coat on and we'll update you once we get the black final coat on, but everything I see so far has me smiling big.

Yes, we were working around Tim's fiberglass repair which was still curing

 

Un hombre cansado

Kintala came out of the water 20 days ago. It doesn't seem possible it has been that long, right up to putting my foot on the ladder and hauling my tired bones aboard at the end of the day. Then it seems like it has been twice that many. I'm not sure we have faced a crush of work like this one since moving to St. Louis. I'm told that's part of the price one pays for the privilege of making a home of a boat and living on the water.

Stripping the mast turned up two problems. The lower starboard spreader bracket is badly cracked and one of the running back stays has a broken strand. The welder is due later next week for the one, the other we will have to replace once we make the East coast. Neither seems much of an issue at the moment but I am going to be very careful with the rigging as it goes back up. I think the spreader bracket broke because a mount pin was too long, which allowed a bushing to drop free, making room for the pin to twist under a load from the spreader; a load high enough to crack the bracket. Not a big deal on Lake Carlyle; maybe a huge deal half way to far away. All the rigging is now neatly packed on a pallet and ready for the truck.

Work on the bottom paint slowed because, for reasons lost in the distant past, Kintala has a heavy coat
of VC17 on the aft half of the port hull. That stuff proved too much for our pair of little palm sanders and probably sent the older one whining into oblivion. So I am bringing a 5 inch orbital sander into the arena tomorrow. (By the way Warrior sandpaper SUCKS LEMONS. Get 3M or Gator paper with the heavy sticky backing paper ... you'll be glad you did!)

We did finish one project; that of changing the V-berth hanging locker into a shelved clothing cabinet. I'm not living out of a sea bag any longer, making Kintala feel just that much more like home. Odd how little things like that matter, but they do.


We have befriended (or been befriended by) our first cruising couple outside of the Internet. Nancy and David departed this very marina nearly 2 years ago in their Seaward 32 and now base their coastal cruising life at a marina in the Chesapeake. It just so happened that they are back in IL for some personal business and staying with the marina manager just as we started this last phase of The Retirement Project. We have shared several meals and spent evenings plying them with every kind of beginner question we can imagine. They, in return, have been everything one would think "cruising friends" can be. Indeed, so highly do they speak of their home base that Deb and I are probably going to have Kintala shipped there for splashing. It might even be that David and Nancy will be back to their boat by then and around for the big day. Amazing how things work out sometimes. Just having them around has made this whole thing seem just that little bit less insane. They have passed this way before and assure us we are not lost.

And so I am still un hombre contento ... with the hope that the work load eases when Kintala is floating once again. Then I can be un hombre que toma una siesta.

View from the clubhouse at Tradewinds Marina where we're staying.

Seems like every marina has their forlorn, forgotten hulls.