Since a previous owner of Grace
Period had kept her in a slip, he had painted the bottom with a rust-red
anti-fouling paint to match her rubrails and waterline stripe. We
intend to trailer sail exclusively, so bottom paint was more of a curse
than a blessing. We have no real need for biocidic or gelcoat protection
since we don't intend to keep the boat in a slip throughout the season.
I'm not sure when the bottom had been painted, but by the time we bought
her, it had begun to look VERY shabby and I decided I couldn't live with
it any longer. We looked into several options, including a repaint
with a variety of paints, anti-fouling and non antifouling. In the
end, I decided to try to remove the old paint first and make a final decision
given what I found after the paint was removed.I began by scrubbing as much of the paint off the hull as possible with a scrubbing pad and Soft Scrub with bleach. In many places, the paint literally ran off the hull. In other places, especially along the waterline and around stern, the paint was more stubborn. This step left the hull looking even worse than
it had before I started, BUT, the good news that the gelcoat looked in
good shape - there were no signs of visible gelcoat blistering and it obviously
hadn't been sanded rough before painting. Next, I used a flat razor
blade scraper to scrape as much of the remaining paint as possible off
the hull. I ran the blade back and forth over a car window a few
times to take some of the edge off the blade so it wouldn't bite into the
gelcoat. Scraping worked well on the flat areas of the hull, not
so well around the water line, where I really needed it. So, the
next step was to begin looking for a paint stripper. After being
warned by folks on the Com-pac Owners Association listserve about the very
real dangers commercial paint removers have on fiberglass gelcoat, I settled
on using Methyl Ethyl Keytone (MEK - essentially acetone that doesn't evaporate
as fast). MEK was available locally (fiberglass paint strippers were
only available mail order), much cheaper than paint strippers, and when
I tested it in an inconspicuous location, didn't soften or damage the gelcoat.
Working in a well ventilated area with suitable protection, I wiped the
remaining painted areas with rags soaked with MEK The MEK worked
well, although I did have to scrub pretty hard, especially around the water
line, to get the paint off.
Here you can see before and after from the bow (left) and the bare hull (right). Unfortunately, however, this is not the end of the story. While the paint is removed, the gelcoat has some staining from the bottom paint that won't come off with MEK. So, I'll have to buff, or, worst case scenario, wet sand the bottom. I'll start with rubbing compound and work my way up as needed.
The boat looks completely different without bottom paint, and I'm glad to have the worst of this job wrapped up. Since I trailer exclusively, I intend to leave the bottom bare, save a good coat of wax once I have the gelcoat cleaned up.
