Final painting

Been doing a lot of painting over the last couple of weeks. Still have a few details to attend to but the exterior is mostly done. I'll be painting bilges this week and also some Mascoat insulating paint around the interior of the porthole and hatch openings. Once thats done, we will be moving on to installing the main engine and then door, windows, ports, and hatches to get the boat weather tight.

Finish Paint...

Started on finish paint today. We are using a 2 part polyurethane called Amershield. Very nice gloss and its supposed to be very durable and abrasion-resistant... a good thing for hull and topsides. This is the final grey that we chose for the hull. Will do one more coat on the hull tomorrow with a hotter thinner added to accelerate the dry time (less of a chance for flying bugs to find their way into our fresh paint). The wheelhouse, hand-rails, and hatch coamings will be gloss white. The decks will be nonskid with a buff/ivory colored topcoat. The big rubrail, smaller caprail, and edge around the wheelhouse roof will be gloss black. We also have a nice bright signal red for the boot-stripe (between the hull and bottom paint) and the top of the stack.

More painting...

Did a little fairing on the hull to smooth out some grinder marks. Painted the final coat of bottom primer followed by bottom paint. Once the epoxy fairing compound was sanded smooth, we did the final coat of exterior primer in white. Sue and I spent a very messy day in the engine room painting the bilge in gloss white epoxy. It doesn't look like that big of a job, but all the pipe work took a long time to brush and roll out by hand. We should be able to spray the rest of the bilges as they don't have so many details to cover.

First full exterior primer coat

Some pics of first primer coat. The transformation has begun...

Interior Primer

Interior primer is done. I got an old but well designed airless spray rig from one of our Baylink engineers (thanks Chuck) and after some new seals and a little tweaking we have gotten it dialed in pretty well. It covers very well and has no problem pushing our heavy epoxy primer through the gun. Bilges and engine room will be top-coated with a 2 part marine polyurethane finish in white. Might get to that this weekend. Interior side shell plating and overheads will be insulated. work continues on final exterior prep.