After the fairing and surfacing was completed, it was time to turn our attention to finally getting primer and paint on the boat. We primed both the hull and deck together in a single day.

Taping and Tacking

The final prep work before finish primer included taping off the new toerail and sealing up all the openings in the deck surface. For most of the taping I used the expensive 3M Heavy-duty silver tape. For the toerail however, I used the expensive tape only on the edges of the rail that were against the deck and hull, then covered the rest of the surface with the less expensive blue maksing tape, using almost 2 full rolls of 1.5 inch wide tape.

White, Grey, White and Grey, White, Grey

Once again, Tim was doing the spray work, while I provided moral and hose support. We got an early start so that we could get a full 3 coats of primer on both the decks and hull before a late afternoon meeting. I arrived at the barn at about 0500, and while Tim took care of getting the gun ready and setting up staging, I vacuumed, solvent washed, and tacked off the hull, deck, and house surfaces.

Once again, we were using the relatively new Alexseal products—this time their finish primer. Soon enough we were underway with the spraying, but soon found that the gun was not putting out much material. After a couple of separate breakdowns we were able to find the clog and get the gun up and running correctly, and after only a delay of 45 minutes or so, we were once again under way.

To deal with the deck surfaces we first sprayed three coats on the house, spraying first white primer, then grey, and finally another coat of white. By alternating primer colors it was easy to see where we had already sprayed and ensure good coverage. The material went on quite nicely, leveling fairly well. Between coats we went outside and enjoyed the beautiful early spring sun while we let the previous coat tack up for about 30-40 minutes.

Once the house was done we followed the same procedure for the cockpit well and seats. Then we sprayed the primary deck surfaces themselves from the staging. On the decks we only sprayed 2 coats on the areas that were going to be nonskid, in an attempt to save enough white primer to put one coat on the hull.

After finishing the decks, we lowered the staging to a height appropriate for spraying the hull and followed the same procedure on the hull, except that we alternated grey-white-grey, as leaving a darker primer coat was fine with the dark green topcoat that was to be sprayed over it. Even with the downtime spent dealing with the gun, we were finished with the primer coats by about 1500.