Bottom Work

Hi!  Sorry we haven't posted in a while, there is a lot going on!

We'll just start back from the last post and get everyone caught up.

So after the electric was completed (more on that later) the weather improved and I was able to start on the outside of the boat.  The outside of the hull was very oxidized.  It had a little bit of reflection at the right angle, but overall was very chalky looking.  Since the oxidation was so bad we had to take a pretty severe approach to getting the gel coat back in shape.

Here are some before shots:

This shot above really doesn't look too terrible in hindsight.  The one thing I hated was that the yellow looked so washed out, and the fiberglass didn't have that "deep" look to it that you can see on new boats.

I did a ton of research online and came up with what I think was the best approach (but not the easiest, believe me.)  As long as the gel coat was still there I could fix it.

Here is what I ended up doing to the entire hull:

1.  Wash  (and wash between/during each sanding step)
2.  Wet sand with 600 grit paper and hand block.
3.  Wet sand with 800 grit paper and hand block.
4.  Wet sand with 1000 grit paper and hand block.
5.  Polish with 3M Compounding polish.
6.  Polish with 3m Finesse II glaze
7.  Hand wax with fleet wax.

This ended up taking about 5 days.  I came up with a total of 20 hours of hand sanding, it made for some long days, but we won't have to do it again.

The stern was in much worse shape than the rest of the hull.  It appeared white in spots and had a huge build up of oxidation.  I ended up add 4 more sanding steps to get it back in shape, including dry sanding.  This was the scariest part of the whole thing.  After sanding it quickly with 150 grit paper to get through the white oxidation, it had the shine and feel of a piece of drywall.  I then just went step by step back up through the grits and polishes and it came back.  There are some bad spots where I think that the gel coat may just be gone already.  We'll have to check it out in the fall.

Here is the stern with the name removed, and I had just started hand sanding.  You can see the yellow starting to come back in the middle.  That little spot was about 2 hours of sanding.  That night I went and bought a little DA sander and the worst of it came off pretty quick the next day.

I also rolled on a fresh coat of bottom paint.  We were being launched on Thursday and I had to be done by Monday night.  I finished all the stuff we needed to do 5 minutes before the yard closed on Monday.

I think it turned out pretty good, I think I can do better next year, but its a start.