Everyone loves stripping bottom paint, right? I mean, we all know what's fun, right? Eeech.

When we purchased the boat, the bottom paint was clearly in need of removal. It had built up to the point where it was actually flaking off in large chips, exposing bare gelcoat in some places. In the areas that we could see the gelcoat, it was clear that we needed to remove the bottom paint so that we could more carefully inspect the condition of the bottom. I was concerned that barrier coating may be necessary and I wanted to be able to assess whether or not I would need to grind and fill any voids in the laminate.

Most Paint Was Loose

On one very warm day late this winter, I went out to the boat with a putty knife and started investigating the paint situation. I actually found that, on the starboard side of the boat, the paint was so poorly adhered that I could literally flake the paint off with nothing more than my putty knife. I spent about 45 minutes or an hour and was able to remove about 1/2 of the paint on that side of the boat. Unfortunately, the port side was in much "better" condition, and I was unable to remove any paint with the scraper.

At this point I was a bit concerned about how we were going to get the rest of the paint off of the bottom. Initial tests with my random orbital sander and 40 grit sandpaper were NOT encouraging. However, at the NETA annual meeting, Bob Patterson, proprietor of "The Triton Factory" at Triangle Marine in Rhode Island, offered us the use of what we have come to call "the boat chipper-shredder." This is a marvelous tool which works like a cross between a power planer and an orbital sander. In about 30 minutes I was able to chip the paint off of a 20 foot by 4 foot section of the bottom, right down to bare gelcoat! THANK YOU BOB!

Heather Steps Up to the Plate

Since I have been busy working on the shaft/cutless bearing/stuffing box debacle, Heather volunteered to take over the onerous job of chipping the bottom. We borrowed a full-face respirator from a friend, and bought a Tyvek suit, and she went at it. The tool did a remarkable job, removing more than 2/3 of the paint from the bottom of the boat. It didn't work on the rudder or any inside curves, like the turn of the bilge, but really removed most of the rest of the paint. The remaining paint was removed with Peel-Away chemical stripper, which actually worked pretty well for us.

The bottom is actually not in too bad condition. The gelcoat is pretty heavily crazed on the starboard side, but is in fairly good condition on the port side. After hemming-and-hawing over the idea for a while, we have decided to go ahead and barrier coat the bottom with Interprotect 2000. Although it may not be necessary, I think that if we are ever going to do it, now is the time, since the boat has been out of the water for 2 years and seems to be very dry.

Finishing Up the Project

I spent some time filling a few minor voids, then we rolled on 3coats of Interprotect 2000, an epoxy barrier coat. The interprotect is a thick grey goo which doesn't exactly roll well, but we managed without too much difficulty. After it cured, we struck a new bootop, with the help of our friend Tim, and rolled on the new bottom paint. Because we never want to deal with the thick build up of bottom paint that we had just removed, we chose a multi-season copolymer ablative paint. We ended up using the West Marine version, which is very similar to Micron CSC. We rolled on 2 complete coats, with a third coat applied at the leading edge, waterline, and rudder.