Sunday, January 6th - The weather was absolutely perfect for working on the boat! Better than that, Stephanie came down this morning asking if I had already gone to get the boat from the storage yard. I knew that this was her way of saying that she wanted to help and I was really excited about her chipping in.
I store the boat about 5 minutes from my office. On a nice day I will take a sandwich over to the boat peel off a foot or so of the old decals. Before this weekend I removed maybe half of the port side.
 |
| Overland points |
Stephanie did an awesome job removing nearly all of the remaining decals. It was a lot of fun having someone to share the day with. Along the way I sent Jim a picture of her working on the boat with a comment that said "Overland points". An hour or so later he drove up to drop off the tools that Joey borrowed for his corn-hole enterprise wanting to know if "I needed any help". ;0) He and I finished removed the decals that Steph did not get to. With my new decal kit in-hand I was really excited about having this task behind me.
 |
1000, 1500, then 2000 grit followed by fine compound using
my new Klutch buffer (nice tool) |
While Stephanie worked on her task I was free to focus on the job that I have been really looking forward to, wet sanding and buffing the hull! I worked on the port stern section of the boat today. I count this as a about 15% of the total not including the bottom. I did a test back in the fall skipping the 1000 grit but that section just did not look as good. It is hard to see before and after in the picture above. If you look at the left side you can see where the blue bottom paint starts. There are several other pictures in my
Hull Repair album. The difference is just amazing!
I was thrilled at how easy the bottom paint came off while wet sanding and how clean and smooth the gel-coat was underneath. While refinishing the stern I used an organic orange stripper which was a messy extra step that I can now skip. Before today I had been thinking that I would repaint the bottom but after this weekend I am going to wet sand if off "over time". I have already done the stern and I think that I will do the waterline and maybe the first 3-5 feet in the bow before the initial launch.
