Bottom jobs are a pain in the aft

Last week, S/V Wanderlust got a much needed makeover while in the boat yard.

This sailboat sat in a marina for months waiting for us to come buy her. We're grateful no one jumped on this deal before us, but sitting so long in the marina with no one to do routine maintenance meant that the hull of this boat was covered in growth.

To slide smoothly along the water and prevent damage to the hull, growth should constantly be removed. But, because no one had looked after S/V Wanderlust for so long, the bottom needed a new paint job, bad. So it was our first agenda item. Although a bottom job is a simple process, it was super time consuming and labor intensive! The good news is that we shouldn't have to do it again for another year or so if we keep up with routine hull cleaning and scraping.

Our friends in the yard estimated we could do the job in a couple days, but being newbies, it took us a little more time, about 4 days.

Here's how we did it.

Clean and scrape the bottom

We started by cleaning the growth, seaweed and barnacles off the hull as much as possible with a power washer and a scraper.

At this time, we had the surveyor check the hull for damage from the growth. Thank goodness our results were good, and no damage to the hull was found! This was a huge relief because hull damage could totally ruin an otherwise great boat!

Sand off the old paint

We used a hand sander with a vacuum attachment to remove the old paint from the hull. This part of the process was the most time consuming, and the most uncomfortable. Although the sander had a vacuum, the paint and fiberglass particles ended up everywhere and were extremely itchy, hence Ben's full body umpa-lumpa suit.

He used the suit, a ventilator, gloves, and goggles, all in 100 degree heat and full sun. I'll just say he was a little grumpy that day. :)

Also, once we started sanding, we found that the hull used to be dark blue, not red. We felt like the blue suited the boat much better, and decided we would repaint the hull blue.

Tape and apply anti-fouling paint

After the hull was sanded smoothly, we used blue painters tape to create a clean line for our first coat of paint. If we could do this step over again, we would have chosen a different tape, because pulling up the painters tape after the job was horrible, as the sun had melted the adhesive onto the fiberglass. We had to use acetone and a scraper to remove the bugger-like residue afterwards - not fun!

Once we had a clean line, we were ready for the anti-fouling paint. We needed about 1 gallon per side of the hull to do two coats. That doesn't sound like much, but this paint is crazy expensive! It cost us $130 per gallon from the DIY boat yard, which actually was less than half the price we'd seen at West Marine.

To apply the paint, we used a small paint brush to edge into the nooks and crannies of the bottom, like the rudder. Then, we used a roller to paint the sides of the hull and the keel. The paint goes on easy, but is thick and tar-like, and difficult to remove if you get it on your skin. We wore gloves and long sleeves to avoid contact.

Once we finished the first coat, we waited overnight (curing time is 10 hours) and did the same thing again for the second coat.

Move stands and paint underneath

After applying two coats, the boat still has bare spots behind where each of the stands supports the hull on the hard. Therefore after the paint had dried, we moved each stand a foot or so to the side, so that we could paint those areas. The yard employees helped us, and after moving the stands, they were careful to cover each of them with cardboard to prevent messing up our beautiful paint job :).

On Splash Day, paint the bottom of the keel

The last step was to paint the bottom of the keel, which had been inaccessible while on the stands. On "Splash Day" which was the day we were to be dropped into the water, the yard employees lifted our boat and then left it hanging long enough so that we could paint the bottom of the keel.

And done!

After we were all painted up, looking fresh, we were ready to splash!

All in all, bottom jobs are not fun. They are, in fact, quite the opposite, especially in the Florida summer. But, we saved hundreds of dollars by doing this ourselves, probably 50%. We identified each thru-hole and its purpose, saw and became familiar with our keel-cooled refridgeration system, and learned a ton about maintenance and caring for our boat.

I call that a success, and our time on the hard has ended! Woo-hoo!

Thanks for reading!

Quinn, Ben and Ruca

#diyprojects #boat #svwanderlust