Boat Renovation: Yes But Is It Art?

Bright and sunny winter days. Normally, this time of year we can expect frost and freezing fog but here in Brittany the winter has been uncharacteristically benign. This year so far, the Atlantic depressions have tracked north bringing storms and floods to the UK but here the seasons are confused; here we have spring flowers blooming and autumn leaves still on the trees. 

Work on the boat has continued. I have shore-power, a coffee pot, an electric boat heater and lighting. A tarpaulin over the boom means I can protect the cockpit and main hatch and keep the cabin ventilated without fear of rain entering the vessel. It’s a comfortable place to be – to work on the area behind and above the wood-burning stove, to renovate the space that used to be the toilet – or simply to run through a few blues tunes on an old guitar that I keep on board for emergencies (might have to use it as a paddle one day).

So here is the new fresh water tank, semi-installed, a few pipes, wires and securing straps to fit and then I will have running water on demand in the galley. 

Meanwhile, what to do with those long winter evenings? Well, I found a couple of old brass portholes in a car-boot sale the other day. I paid 3E (£2.10) for them. Back home I cut pieces of old MDF to fit and then painted a couple of appropriate naïve nautical scenes on them. I fitted them to the bulkhead in the main cabin yesterday and was quite pleased with the result. Sometimes even the simplest most trivial efforts can bring a sort of reward.

Is it art? Nope not by any stretch of the imagination! But its fun.

Seaward

Renovating the Boat Galley

There comes a point when frustration takes over and it changes your motivation. It doesn’t increase or diminish it but it makes you re-order your priorities. It is almost the end of July and to date I can count the number of sailing trips on the fingers of one hand. Why is that? Because last year was all about the exterior of the boat – this year the focus turned to the cabin and a perfect day for sailing is also a perfect day for sanding varnishing and painting – you can’t do both.

To some extent I have been my own worst enemy. Let’s face it the cabin was fine – so long as you kept your eyes closed – maybe I should have done more of that. Instead, I have sanded off all the old varnish from the woodwork and removed every bit of flaking paint – and then every surface has had at least five coats of paint or varnish – a bit over the top really. Only a few bits left to do and then I have a blank canvass to work with. A space I can use to create a real ‘boaty’ feel - wooden bulkheads, shelves, a decent cooking area and a sink large enough to put a plate in.

The most recent bit of work has been to renovate the galley area. Most of the surfaces there are covered in tired Formica of a particularly bland design. My initial reaction was to remove it – all of it – but then, what to replace it with? The galley area gets hard use and what other material would do the job? My next reaction was to apply new Formica over the old. For a while I wondered whether the product still existed so I was pleasantly surprised to find the company’s website and even happier when I saw the range of colours and patterns available. 

My problem however, turned out to be finding a local supplier willing to sell me a relatively small amount.  I found I could purchase similar materials in small quantities but they came in the form of kitchen work surfaces, so thick they would have reduced the galley space to an unacceptable size. There are sticky plastic products that can be stuck over old Formica like a film but, I wasn’t sure that they would be hard-wearing enough and anyway, I doubted my ability to get them on without creases. wrinkles or bubbles. So, in the end I settled on paint – two coats of marine quality undercoat (that I already had) and three coats of high-gloss yacht paint. I’m pleased with the results so far.

In the last few years two new words entered the UK vocabulary. Who knows, they might already be

in the latest editions of the Oxford English Dictionary. The first word – ‘staycation’ – a term which came out of the 2007 economic recession – meaning a vacation taken within the UK rather than an expensive trip to sunnier and warmer locations. The other term – ‘glamping’ – meaning glamorous camping – this is what many staycationers aimed for.

Well out of these two movements came a plethora of ideas for being warm, comfortable and happy on low budget, stay-at-home holidays. In fact a whole style movement seems to have been born. People are purchasing old 1950’s and 1960’s caravans and refurbishing them in a bright retro colours, suddenly these vintage years are back in vogue – and so, I guess, my old boat could be a contender for a retro style award. Well, that at least is my explanation for the colour chosen for my refurbished galley area – a tip of the hat to retro style in an old boat of the period. Who knows, maybe I could invent a new term for frugal sailing – Glamailing? Glamachting? Glamoating?

Seaward

Paint for Boat Cabin Interiors

A great deal of the work required to bring a GRP boat back to life is pretty mindless. Lots of sanding polishing and painting – and it takes a long time. But let’s put a positive spin on this – it gives you time to think, and one thing I have learned is that there is always more than one solution to the next problem. How to fit a bulkhead? How to get the best paint effect? Whether to use oil or vanish on the woodwork? How to renovate old Formica surfaces? Another thing I have learned is that the first solution is rarely the best. So time provides room for thought.

Throughout the renovation project I have given a great deal of thought to the cabin interior and I have

come up with lots of ideas – most of which I have had to reject on the basis of cost or feasibility. This boat is an early example of a westerly and also an early example of GRP. The building process in those days (1968-9) was to make a mould and pour Gel-coat into it. Once the Gel was pretty much set, the boat-builders would then lay layer after layer of GRP mat over it, soaking each layer in resin. In some places, more mat was added to provide strength and rigidity. The outcome was a boat with a beautiful mirror-like exterior and a pretty rough, industrial looking, interior. The ugly straw coloured interior would often receive a coat of gloss white paint to finish her off.

Well maybe taste was different in those days, maybe purchasers found the treatment attractive. To my 21 century eyes however, the interior of the Westerly Nomad cabin is less attractive than the inside of a gent’s toilet on a bus station.

First question has to be why do I find this so unattractive? Second question – what can I do about it? Well, let’s face it – various layers of chopped glass fibre mat laid unevenly can never be attractive. The whole surface is lumpy. In some places where additional mat has been added, you can actually see the fibre – glued to the surface like a bandage. When you add gloss paint the surface sparkles randomly. It is as if the light accentuates the unevenness of the finish.

Later Westerly’s had foam backed vinyl head-linings attached to marine ply templates screwed to the cabin roof but they too had their problems. Over time, the foam deteriorated to a fine black dust and the glue failed leaving many owners with a problem that be came known as ‘Westerly droop’. Sagging vinyl isn’t attractive and today the cost of replacement foam backed vinyl is exorbitant. I didn’t want to spend the money – and anyway, I’m not prepared to invest in a solution that seems not to work.

Looking at brochures for expensive modern yachts, I was attracted to an idea of using  regularly spaced wooden lats along the cabin roof to give an impression of  a wooden yacht. The lats maybe four inches (10cms) wide and about a quarter-inch (6cms)  thick  run the length of the roof and between each one there is maybe a three or four inch gap. They seem to accentuate the length of the cabin and they provide a handcrafted kind of warmth to an otherwise industrial cold GRP surface. At the time of writing, this is what I am aiming for but before that I need to improve the background GRP somehow.

Having sanded all the interior wood and GRP I decided to paint the GRP surfaces but unlike the original builder I decided to try for a mat finish in the hope that the flattened paint would draw less attention than the high gloss used before.

I have read on the internet about paint used on the interior of boat cabins. Some writers declare that a standard home interior paint is all that is required. Others suggest that the climate in a boat cabin is more extreme and suggest that a kitchen or bathroom paint is more appropriate. Some have also reported good results using exterior masonry paint. I guess most of these writers were basing their choice on cost. Obviously home products are cheaper than those specifically designed for the marine environment. One thing they seem to have overlooked however, is that the actual amount of paint required is quite small. Paint for house walls tends to come in large containers. It may be cheap, but the cost is high if you have to purchase a much larger tin than you need – especially if you don’t have another use for it. I did the sums, a small tin of marine quality paint would be all I needed, and the cost was little more than a large tin of inferior house paint.

I chose International Paints ‘Toplac’ a one pot paint I have become familiar with. It is high gloss, but fortunately International also produce a ‘matting agent.’, add it to the paint and you have a flat mat finish – perfect!

So the white bits inside the cabin have been treated to degreasing, sanding, two coats of undercoat and a Matted Toplac finish.

If you are thinking about a similar treatment however, please note. Toplac without matting agent is high gloss, Toplac with 25% matting agent produces a ‘satin finish’, and Toplac mixed 50%/50% with matting agent gives you an ‘eggshell finish’. If you really want matt (as I did) you have to work with a mixture of 25% paint to 75% matting agent. Be aware therefore, that these matt topcoats contain very little pigment, you’ll need to build up several coats to get the depth of colour, and even then, the final result will be highly depended on the thickness of undercoat you were able to create beforehand.

So, the cabin now has four coats of paint on painted surfaces and five coats of Woodskin on the wooden areas. It has been a lot of work just to achieve a blank canvass, but worth it …………. I think.

Seaward

Refitting The Cabin Interior

Been having a debate with myself and still haven’t quite reached a conclusion. Despite the fact I wear a mask, I still get to taste dust when I’m sanding back the old paintwork and the wood in the cabin. The debate? Well, which tastes worse – plywood dust, paint or GRP? At the moment I think the paint.

This job is progressing really slowly, there are a number of reasons – I have lots of other things to do and most of them are marginally more appealing than laying on my back with an electric sander pouring cabin-roof dust over my face. When the weather is good, I don’t want to be in that hot cabin and when the weather is bad I find excuses for doing other things.

And then there was the bomb, two in fact, and that slowed me down somewhat! There is a road bridge not too far from the village where I live. It takes traffic across the estuary at a point where the valley narrows. In 1944, the Americans bombed the bridge to confine the Germans prior to attacking St Malo. A couple of weeks ago a yachtsman fouled his anchor under the new bridge and couldn’t raise it so he enlisted a friend with diving equipment to see if he could go down and free it. He followed the anchor cable to the bed and discovered the anchor was firmly wedged between two 9000lb unexploded American bombs. People on both sides of the estuary were evacuated for two days.

And then, the port authorities decided to dredge the harbour so boats had to be moved and shore-power wasn't available for a while. 

And then, there is Joe’s bar.  Joe sets up a bar from an old caravan by the beach each summer. I can see it from the boat and it sings like a siren – pulls like a magnate. Ten minutes sanding = twenty minutes hanging out at Joe’s, chillin’ and talking boats and blues with the rest of the guys who can’t resist sunshine and ice cold beer either.

So despite the above, I guess I have made some progress. All the old black varnish has been removed and the wood furniture now look new and ready for coating and the gloss paint on the GRP is now mat and keyed ready for painting again. The colour scheme planned for the cabin is not of my choosing. It will be white and blue because the berth cushions are blue and too good to throw away or re-cover. The white bits will be mat however, and the wood will be oiled but not coloured so hopefully the cabin will be lighter and brighter than before.

With luck I’ll be painting next week. Once I've got the dust out of the cabin. I always knew the cordless Dyson would come in handy.

Seaward

Back to the Boat

It’s that anxious time of year – spring may be just around the corner but I recall two years ago when,after a mild winter, we had snow through March to April. The boat has been somewhat neglected recently. It seems as if all the effort to bring her back to life before the end of the summer left me quite exhausted. There again maybe it wasn’t exhaustion. Maybe it had something to do with the need to make progress in other areas of life – get some things off the list. (See my other blog ‘Frugal Living in France)

So, the boat was launched looking good on the outside but the interior was more like a floating slum. The cabin remains to be renovated and it has to be done because this year we’re going to make a real voyage – somewhere.

There is good news though – the paint systems and the wood treatments I used have stood up to the winter really well so I can wholeheartedly recommend International Paint Products – especially ‘WoodSkin’.

And here is another product I can recommend – it has a million and one uses on a boat and I’m now a firm believer that every boat should carry it. What is it? Well, it’s a product called ‘Sugru’ – a sort of self-setting rubber, disguised as a kind of play-dough.

It comes in handy sized sachets in a variety of colours. Open the packet and make whatever shape you want with your hands or by pressing it into a mold – it is very pliable. Twenty four hours later it will have set to a tough, flexible silicone rubber. Before it sets it

is self adhesive – it will stick to aluminium, steel, ceramics, wood, glass or most plastics. When it is set, it can be removed from non-porous surfaces. When cured it is waterproof and even dishwasher proof. It doesn’t mind heat or cold, it is electrically insulating and UV resistant, and if aesthetics are important, it comes in a variety of colours in each pack so you can mix the colours to create the colour and shade you require.

To date, I have used it to plug an above-water engine outlet that was no longer required. I have used it to make washers for nuts and bolts and I have created grommets to protect electric cable when passing through bulkheads. I have also made pads behind equipment attached to bulkheads to eradicate vibration noise. I have used it to cover bolts where they come into the cabin – at least I’ll bang my head more softly now. Rings made of Sugru also stop my wine bottles rattling, and similar rings around my thermos flask improve its chances of survival if it falls off the bench. In an emergency it would make an idea temporary bung but best of all it can be used to protect expensive objects with sharp corners – iPads, cameras etc.

I'm sure there are lots of other uses for the stuff and I’m also sure that there is probably a different solution for each use of Sugru that I have mentioned here – the point I am making though, is that Sugru is one item with a million uses so I don’t have to think up new solutions. Take some to the boat whenever you visit but keep the rest in the fridge at home. The fridge extends its use-by date significantly.

UK Readers can get it here

Sugru Multi-Colour (Pack of 8)

USA Readers can get it here
Sugru SMLT8 Hardware Sealer, Multi Color, 8-Pack

Seaward

Low Spot

I suppose there comes a time in every project when you wonder whether you should ever have begun; a low spot when the tasks seem overwhelming and never ending. I’m surprised to have arrived at this point so late in the process – a lot of the boring cleaning, sanding and polishing and painting has been done and I now seem to be in a phase of having to undertake dozens of small tasks. This should be more interesting than the months of mindless sanding but at the moment the boat seems to be fighting me every step of the way.

Nothing is straight forward at the moment and every task seems to require a good deal of lateral thinking in order to establish a process which will lead to a satisfactory outcome. Fitting sliding hatch doors in the cockpit for example, turned out to be a real time consuming pain. The runners obviously had to be parallel to allow the doors to slide but there wasn’t a single right angle to be found anywhere. I got through the job but there were several sleepless nights spent trying to develop a method. Now the latest problem is refitting halyards to the mast. The ropes came in a sail bag so it is guesswork as to each rope’s function and they were pulled through internal mast pulleys. To date I have spent two days trying to get the ropes back through and round. I’ll try again tomorrow with three new ideas – just hope one of them works.

None of this is helped by the fact that it is now June and I want to be on the water. Added to that I have to go to the UK for two weeks to see family, deadlines are being missed and it is all very frustrating.

 

So to cheer myself up I have just spent an hour looking at pics – before and after - and I can certainly say I have made real improvements to the old tub – I shouldn't moan – and if I can get those halyards fitted tomorrow I may feel better – meanwhile family and friends have been advised not to talk about the bloody boat!

Seaward

Can You Smell The Sea?

There is a long period during the restoration of an old boat when all your efforts seem to be destructive. Taking off hatches to repair or replace, ripping out old wires and equipment, removing deck fittings and endless, endless sanding, scraping and filling. It’s a necessary part of the process. Much of the work is repetitive, mindless and frankly boring. All you can do is keep the faith and trust it will all turn out for the best. I like to think that Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins, Howling Wolf and Buddy Guy were all in my team at that time – certainly I need to thank them for their encouragement via the iPlayer!

But then one day last week I turned a corner. There was no gel coat left to polish and out came a pot of paint to cover the extensive anti slip surfaces, transforming them from a standard Westerly blue/grey to a lighter buttermilk colour. I chose this to complement the green hull. Initially I had thought about making these surfaces green too but an article on the internet posted by

someone who had done this made me think twice. The problem with any darkish colour is that it absorbs heat from the sunshine and it can make the cabin unbearably hot in summer. So International Paints ‘cream’ non-slip was the chosen product. It contains grit so the surface is pleasingly rough. A word of caution here – you must stir the paint well before and during the painting process to make sure the grit is evenly dispersed. The painting technique is to ‘stipple’ or use random brush strokes to make sure the grit gets everywhere. Two coats were enough for me and it was a remarkably quick job. Carful masking out was the time consuming part. I used two different tapes – one for long straight edges and another which was specially manufactured to cope with curves – a kind of crepe masking tape.

Today, I pulled off the tape and refitted my hatches and already it feels like I’m building rather than

destroying. It’s taken a long time but today I’m sure I have turned that all important corner.









There is still much to do, cockpit lockers, washboards, antifouling, mast and rigging and then the cabin needs a complete make-over - but today at least, it feels as if I can almost smell the sea!

Seaward

Wooden Boat Hatches, Oil or Varnish?

One of my recent posts proved to be quite controversial, regular readers will recall I have been renovating the hatches on this old boat – and I covered them in strips of a teak-like wood (oily and red). Between each strip I had rubber compound caulking. Now the controversial bit was what came next – varnish, oil or nothing at all?

French friends suggested nothing at all, the oily wood can look after itself and it eventually matures to a silver-grey. Well, yes I’ve done this with the green oak bits of the house I am renovating, but for a boat? Well I always think grey weathered teak make a boat look uncared for, so, oil or varnish? Well, much of what I read suggested oily woods don’t like varnish, the natural oil make adhesion difficult. Then I read an independent article in Classic Boat magazine about oil produced by International Paints but I misnamed it – called it ‘Woodcoat’ when in fact it is called ‘Woodskin’. I had used it on other parts of the boat so decided to use it on the hatches as well. So far so good – except a number of readers suggested that it would not be as good as varnish.

Well its done now and I guess time will tell. Practical Boat Owner Magazine, about a year ago, suggested that you can varnish over Woodskin, so this may be a solution if I need to use it. The main criticism seems to have been that a hatch laying flat and facing the sky is more exposed than other wooden elements of a boat and that only varnish with strong UV protection will do the job. So far I am pleased with the results but here is a word of warning for anyone considering using the same process. Oil soaks into wood but not into rubber caulking. As a result I found that whereas the Woodskin was dry to the touch within a few hours of application on the wood, it stayed wet and sticky on the rubber for several weeks. In fact I think it would still be sticky had I not wiped and cleaned the rubber strips with white spirit.

Meanwhile, as I have been sanding and polishing Gel coat, another boat only 100 yards away has been getting a make-over too. This beached and abandoned fishing boat drew the attention of a local artist ‘Cadeon’ who said he wanted somehow to capture the spirit of her youth --- He’s done a pretty good job don’t you think?

Seaward

New Hatch for a Westerly Nomad

So here are the refurbished hatches for my boat – almost finished – just needing a little sanding and then a

coating – oil or varnish? For me its going to be International Paints ‘Woodcoat’, I’ve used it already on the rubbing streak and it seems to be a good product – I noticed also that Classic Boat magazine tested it and gave it three stars – that’s to say it was still good 54 months after application. The manufacture suggests three coats but I’ll probably do five.

I kept a list of materials used and costs just to kill the myth that you can purchase an old boat and renovate her at little expense – you can’t. Marine quality materials are expensive. Even if you are a DIY expert you shouldn’t get into this unless you have the resources, and remember these aren’t new hatches, I already had the frames and all the metal fittings.

To renew these hatches cost:

Marine ply 6mm –                                30 Euros

Teak (like) lats of wood (machined)      50 Euros

Glue                                                     16 Euros

Rubber compound                                32 Euros

Fillers and sanding papers                     8   Euros

TOTAL                                               130 Euros

In addition there will be:

Pre-Kote (International Paints) undercoat

Toplac (International Paints) Mediterranean white top coat

Wood Coat (International Paints) Wood oil

Well when I launch I may not have the best boat in the harbour – but I’ll have the best

Hatches!

Seaward

A New Hatch for a Westerly Nomad

Have been working in the warm whenever possible recently –outside is gale lashed and very wet – better

than the UK however, most of that seems to be under water. So, at last attention has been turned to the boat hatches. The main hatch into the cabin was made of Iroko and marine ply. The Iroko frame is in reasonable condition but the marine ply cover is delaminated and soft in places. I turned to a good friend Alain Hughes a boat-builder, engineer and an outstanding seaman. His solution was to strip away the ply and replace it with two sheets of 6mm ply glued and screwed together. Why two sheets? Because the curve was too pronounced to bend a single 12mm sheet. Around the frame Even with 6mm he had to use a router to create a few grooves on the underside to enable the wood to flex enough.

For purely aesthetic reasons he then added strips of a teak look-alike wood so that from the outside at least she looks planked. The fore-hatch is an ugly old GRP box and so Alain is going to use the left-over wood strips to produce a planked effect on that too. The wooden hatch is a really solid job and if the boat ever gets holed I know which bit of the boat I’ll be clinging on to.

While this has been going on I have started to paint wood taken from the inside of the cabin. The half bulkheads either side of the companion way. They had been varnished but I decided to use paint

because I want to create a sense of space within the cabin. Ideally, a mat white finish with strips of light varnished wood around the edges. I could have used the standard one pot international marine yacht paint but I didn't want a high gloss finish and anyway it was expensive. So I read that for cabin interiors a bathroom paint or an exterior paint is quite acceptable, because both can cope with humidity and contain anti-fungal additives. I opted for a Dulux exterior white ‘One Coat’ but it hasn’t worked I sanded off all the old varnish but so far I have applied four coats of the ‘one coat’ and it still hasn’t produced a solid even coat, and what’s worse it looks like plastic. Back to the drawing board with this I think.

 

Actually, having seen the fantastic effect of strip wood on the hatch, I’m seriously tempted to do something similar here – using some light oak panels. It adds weight but when you’re working on a Westerly Nomad (built like a tank, sails like a tank) – who cares!

Seaward

Boat Renovation and Intermediate Technology

So, the cockpit interior is painted and the combings are polished. I’m pleased with the results and surprised by the amount of time the job took. I could have done better though. What would I have done differently? Well International Paints produce three shades of white. One is very pure – a hint of blue in it I think. The white I chose was called Mediterranean White    - it is a softer colour – but there is another called Ivory – slightly creamier and I think it would have blended better with the original gelcoat which I’m hoping not to have to paint. Hindsight is a great thing but there is still a great deal to do so it is important I push on while the weather is still reasonably good.

There has to be time for reflection and planning however, and so that is my excuse for not doing too much this coming week. In truth I have been invited to crew a boat delivery trip (Toinoux, a Moody 33) from my home port Plouer Sur Rance to St Valerie en Caux in Normandy – quite a complicated voyage of about 180 sea miles. I don’t know how we’ll do it yet but almost certainly we will head north for Guernsey and then West along the English Channel trying to stay out of the busy shipping lanes and also to avoid the inshore fishing fleets and the cargo traffic entering and leaving Le Havre, Cherbourg, Caen, and the Seine estuary. The first part of the trip may be the most challenging as we have the highest tides (and strongest tidal streams) in northern Europe right outside our front door – all the way up to Guernsey. There is a kind of shortcut through the Alderney race but the timing has to be right otherwise you bounce around a good deal even on a calm day.

I’m hoping the trip will be fun and that it will provide time for me to move my thinking along about the boat restoration and reflecting on what I have learned so far. One important lesson is that simple sailing and low cost cruising cannot be achieved by the use of inferior materials or fittings. If it isn’t marine grade don’t use it. The real saving is in labour charges – do everything you can yourself even if it takes four times as long as a professional (and it probably will!).

Something I have discovered to my advantage however is that these older 1960 GRP boats were built in remarkably traditional ways. I’m reminded of the world’s first iron bridge built and still standing in the UK midlands. Iron at that time was the new wonder material but its properties were not fully understood or exploited – as a result the bridge was heavily constructed using standard woodworking joints. So it seems to be with this old Westerly Nomad, there are few significant internal mouldings, everything can be unscrewed broken down and taken home for working on in a more sheltered environment. It wouldn’t be too difficult to reconfigure the accommodation if I could think of a better, more convenient, arrangement. 

One thing I am sure of since looking at The Unlikely Boat Builder Blog is that I don’t like all these dark heavily varnished Teak bulkheads. I’m tempted to paint them all in a flat white matt and edge them with a paler varnished wood like John has done. Take a look at his site I think you’ll agree that’s the way to go.

Seaward

How to Lift Old Masking Tape

I knew I would have problems removing the masking tape from the cockpit combing after painting the inside of the boat cockpit. The job had simply gone on too long due to extreme weather and so the tape had been on for a month. Problem is that the paper deteriorates and the glue hardens. When you pull off the tape the glues stays firmly fixed to the GRP surface and it can be extremely difficult to remove.

Internet research suggested a number of strategies and products. I was worried however, because some writers suggest that some of the commercial glue removing products can damage the paint or gelcoat. The solution therefore had to be a gentle one, and anyway, this story is about ‘low cost’ solutions. Two particularly interesting (although contradictory) suggestions were:

rub the area with oil – WD40 or even cooking oil, this adds moisture to the dryed out glue and makes it easier to scrape off;

or

use a really strong degreaser such as a kitchen cleaner based on lemon or citric acid and this will remove the sticking quality of the glue and make it easier to remove.

So, one suggestion recommends adding oil, the other suggests removing it. I discarded the WD40 solution because I thought it might stain the gelcoat or adjacent new paint and instead I opted for the use of Olive Oil. First though I had to get the paper off. I was lucky to some extent because I had used a good quality masking tape (blue rather than white) and theis meant to problems was not quite so bas as I had imagined. I was also fortunate because the tape had been applied around the combing of the cockpit and therefore the surface to be cleaned was quite narrow.

The paper came off easily enough using a bog standard Opinel folding knife as a draw-knife and simply pulling the balde towards me under the paper. The Opinel is a wood handled folding knife available throughout France and few country folk leave home without one in their pockets. I particularly like the mild steel blade which can be sharpened on any piece of granite you might pick up in a filed or hedgerow.

Next, I rubbed olive oil into the gray hadened glue and left it for about ten minutes. Sure enough it loosened the glue and much of it lifted off using the knife blade as a scraper.

Then on went the degreaser, a builder’s detergent I picked up in a DIY store. Having left this for a while, a course rag finished the job easily. My bacon was savcd.

Seaward

How to Paint a GRP Boat

 

Well this is my final report on painting the GRP cockpit of my ancient Westerly Nomad. 

The final report because I don’t want to think about this subject ever again and also because I did finally manage to get the job done – and I have to say, I am pleased with the result. So I've taken some time out to go fishing.

The whole process was dogged by unusual weather in the form of heat wave temperatures, strong winds or threats of rain but I finally achieved two coats of Pre-Kote and two top coats of TopLac – a one pot emulsion produced by International Paints.

Now I don’t believe that having managed to paint the cockpit makes me any kind of expert but for the sake of anyone else considering embarking on this task, here is a brief summary of what I learned (mainly through the mistakes I made).

A professional will spend 80% of his effort on preparation of the GRP surface. As an amateur you should devote 90% on this task and that will probably take you 95% of the time. No amount of paint will cover or hide sloppy preparation. Preparation includes:

cleaning the surface to be painted;

washing with a degreaser and/or acetone to remove any possible traces of silicone;

removing as many fittings as you can so that you can paint underneath to avoid having too many ‘edges’;

filling holes, dings, cracks;

sanding, to smooth filling and other imperfections, to remove stains and to provide a key for the paint; (Start with 80 grade sandpaper and finish with 120 grade or even finer) *NOTE the lower the number the courser the paper

removing all traces of sanding dust and moisture;

masking off the edges.

Then, and only then, can you consider getting some paint on. There are numerous products available and without a doubt some of the best rely on two pot paint and hardener systems. They’re fine if you are confident with a paint sprayer and your boat is in a shed where you can control temperature and humidity. For the rest of us however, a more traditional one pot paint is more forgiving and it will give a better finish than a poorly applied two pot system.

Paint should be applied in thin coats. Some people prefer a brush, others like rollers. I tried both and finally settled on a cheap foam pad. Cheap disposable brushes are fine so long as they don’t shed hairs. Some people comb their brushes with a hair-comb and they swear it is a very effective method for dislodging loose hairs which might stick to the paintwork. Roller users should use small foam or very short haired rollers to avoid ‘orange peel effects’. A dry brush in you other had can be very effective in removing drips, runs, brush or roller marks before the paint sets. Paint should be applied in a union flag manner to help avoid obvious unidirectional brush marks on the finished job.

Do not underestimate weather effects. If the weather is too hot, the paint will dry as you paint and the effects will be awful, too windy and you get dust and if there is a hint of rain – do something else. Even on a perfect day, you will find that the paint behaves differently on different parts of the boat. So in areas where the GRP is in direct sunlight the paint will be quicker to set and less forgiving than in cooler shadier areas. Take a garden watering can with you and damp down the area around the boat to minimise dust.

I actually made a poorer job in areas where I was too careful, applying paint in minute quantities and brushing out too often for too long. As it sets it can drag and when this starts to happen it is best left alone. The areas where I was more confident were done much quicker and they produced the best effect. Keep checking back, especially corners and hard edges drips can be brushed out if you spot them soon enough. Apply the paint thinly, several carefully applied thin coats are better than one coat applied too thickly.

The good news is that if a coat goes wrong, you can always sand back to a smooth surface and apply a new coat – providing of course that you remove the dust after sanding. I had to do this with my second undercoat using 240 grade sandpaper – no harm was done.

I now have a problem however, - Finding the ideal weather conditions to get the four coats on took as many weeks and the masking tape is now probably welded to the gel coat. Ah well, that’s a problem for next week. Onwards and upwards!

Seaward 

   

Painting a GRP Boat (3)

OK, two coats of Pre-Kote manufactured by International Marine, followed by a significant amount of time sanding back the second coat which had been applied in too fierce a summer heat.  It wasn’t particularly hard work but after all the sanding I had done to prepare the surface for painting it was disheartening.

Regular readers will understand that on applying the second coat of Pre-Kote I made a mess of the job by trying to paint when the GRP was far too hot, probably about 50 degrees C in the strong sunshine. Well, it went on more like plaster than paint and it dried showing every roller and brush mark so it had to be sanded back.

So then I had to wait for cooler weather. Typical isn’t it, a few months ago I was moaning about snow and lack of decent weather, now I’m moaning that there is too much of it. Still, on Tuesday, we had 19 degrees C, with no breeze and so I managed to get the first top coat on (Toplack International paints).

This time, I decided to do without a roller because, despite lots of research and careful purchasing, the recommended roller still tried to create an orange peel effect. This time, I tried a kind of paint pad. Best way to describe it is to say it looks like a foam- rubber (or plastic) lollypop. It was for sail from the chandlery for 1.5E and it worked like a dream.

I applied the paint following the best advice which is to apply the paint as if you are describing a union flag to avoid obvious unidirectional brush strokes and the result was excellent (well to an amateur’s eye  anyway). Weather forecast for Wednesday suggested a possible shower so Thursday was set for the second and final coat.

I woke early on Thursday morning with a view to getting the paint on early enough in the day while the temperature was suitably low. Over a six thirty am coffee however, the BBC announced that this could be the hottest day of the year in the UK. Now, I am not in the UK but I’m close enough to be concerned so I re-checked my French Meteo forecast and discovered they too had changed their opinion and were now suggesting we were in for a very hot and breezy day. In truth the afternoon temperature in my back yard exceeded all forecasts, my yard thermometer read 50 degrees at 16:00 hours and, given that there are only 50 degrees on my thermometer, the chances are it exceeded even this high temperature.

I’m desperate to get this painting job done, partly because I don’t want to do any more dusty work on the boat until the final coat is on and dry but also because I masked the area to be painted two weeks ago and I’m becoming increasingly concerned that the tape and/or its glue might be a real problem to remove.

For the moment though, all I can do is wait until the meteorological conditions are right for this crucial final coat. In the meantime, I’ve brought a good deal of the wooden bits back here to the house so I can sand, repair and oil them in the back yard. The trick is to keep pushing on using delays in some jobs as opportunities to do other things (see below).

Well one is sanded!

Given that it is so hot, I’m tempted to take the kayak out on the water, maybe catch a mackerel or two for

supper, but I’ve just looked at the kit and discovered the kayak trailer has a flat tire – another job to add to the list.

Seaward

Painting a GRP Boat (2)

So, I removed all the fixtures and fittings from the cockpit, sanded every bit of GRP I intended to paint with

finer and finer sandpaper down to a paper grade of 125, filled every hole and scrape with filler paste, and washed the entire area with acetone, - and then I reckoned I was ready to paint. I chose International Paints Pre-Kote and one pot enamel ‘Toplac’ as a paint system mainly because it was easily available, but also because there was plenty of literature about these products on the internet and it seemed like the easiest paint system for an amateur to apply out of doors without specialist equipment. Before I started, I painted the bilges with Red Danboline and taped off the areas to be painted with masking tape.

I think I may have read too much about painting GRP and as a result I was nervous about tackling the job. On Monday however, I was out of excuses. The weather was dry and the forecast suggested there would be no rain in the near future. I had all the kit I needed and the wind was light.

In applying the first coat of Pre-Kote I followed the best advice I had been given –

1.      work with a small fine sponge- type roller;

2.      apply the paint union flag style – rolling in every direction rather than simply applying it in a right to left or up and down direction;

3.      put the paint on in thin coats;

4.      keep a dry brush handy to even out the coat and eradicate ridges or orange peel effects caused by the brush.

The coat went on beautifully and was touch dry within an hour or so, and just to illustrate how awful the boat had looked before, here's a close up of an area of the GRP surface before cleaning and painting.

Returning to the boat on Tuesday morning I was well pleased with the results. There were a few areas of ‘orange peel’ effects, mainly on curved areas and these were soon sanded smooth, using 240 grade sandpaper. So all was set for a second application of Pre-Kote, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) before I could start, three guys turned up and began work on a boat next but one to mine. Looking at the equipment they brought with them I guessed they may be about to kick up some dust so I waited to see what happened. To my amazement, they set to work with a chainsaw and angle grinder and set about reducing their boat to neat one metre squares, which they promptly loaded onto a trailer to take to the rubbish dump.

Curiosity got the best of me. Here is the story. One of these guys bought this 22ft sailing cruiser on the water last year and brought her to the boatyard to over-winter her. She was a pretty fast light sailing cruiser of GRP sandwich construction. In essence, two sheets of GRP with a central core of foam. The boat had a large spade keel and she was laid up ashore with legs made of scaffolding poles to keep her upright. The legs served their purpose in keeping her upright, but they did not support the hull so all the weight of the boat rested on the keel which stood on hard ground. During the course of the winter the keel pierced the hull and came up through the cabin. Repair would have been too expensive and so the owner decided to cut his loss by scrapping her and avoiding any more yard rental fees. Within half a day she was gone.

Well, those guys certainly did kick up a good deal of dust so I had to use the early afternoon to clean my paint job before the second coat of Pre-Kote could be applied. It was four o’clock in the afternoon before I was ready and the weather was very very hot. I checked the thermometer and the technical specifications for the paint. The air temperature was about 35 degrees C, - top end of the paint’s range. According to the manufacturers, at this temperature, the coat would be touch-dry within an hour of application.

Like an idiot I took this to be a good sign. The paint would be well dry before the dew. Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered the effect of day–long strong sunshine on the GRP surface. I subsequently discovered that although the air had been 35 Degrees C, the GRP had been closer to 50 degrees. As a result, the paint dried as it touched the surface. Orange peel effects and hard edges couldn’t be smoothed out and, at times, the job felt less like painting and more like plastering. I should have stopped but I persevered. It didn’t look good when I finish and it looked even worse the following day.

Nothing for it but to sand it smooth. It wasn’t difficult but it was disheartening. Once again John Lee Hooker and BB King assisted me in retaining my sanity..

So, as of today, the boat has a cockpit with two coast of Pre-Kote on her and she is ready for her two coats of Toplack – but the heat wave has broken and we are now in a thundery stormy period and I can’t move forward on this job until I get a forecast offering 48 hours of dry calm weather.

Still, to look on the bright side, there are still lots of other jobs I can get on with so a change in strategy is called for. If I can’t paint the cockpit I’ll start polishing the combings and preparing the decks for an application of non-slip deck paint.

Seaward