With our girl back at home in our garage work could begin in earnest to get the new paint on her. The clock was ticking and I only had little over a month to get all the white painted, the hull striped, and put her all back together. Could I get it done and how much sleep do I really need?
First thing was first. I had to get a urethane epoxy primer sealer on all the repaired areas. While expensive and a mess to apply this is awesome primer that will fill 80 grit sand scratches. Luckily I had some left over from previous projects so I did not have to buy it. Good news as our budget was about at its limit already. Here she is primed.
I had just enough to cover all the areas I needed to so I really lucked out there because at a 100 bucks a quart I was not buying anymore of that stuff!
We used a Dupont automotive single stage urethane enamel paint because I wanted this to last longer than the 3-5 years they say the boat paint will last. While it last much longer it also much more hazardous to spray so we had to make sure we had the correct gear. Cindy loved the stylish look I had her decked out in
We finally lucked out and the day we wanted to spray the white on the hull and other parts the weather actually cooperated and we had great conditions. The wind even blew the right direction to keep the over spray off the house and garage. After a busy afternoon of masking and prepping for paint we finally had a white boat!!!
That was a big step done but there is still more to do and the days are winding down. At this point there are only about 20 days left till we launch. Starting to sweat a little bit.
After the white dried it was time to finish the bottom paint and start prepping for the stripes. The bottom paint went on well and by the end of the weekend it was done.
Now is about the time that my luck would run out. Always before I have always tried to keep things as simple as I can to prevent what was about to happen but for some crazy reason I let caution go to the wind and paid dearly for it.
I used to paint motorcycle tanks and used to use cut stencils to paint on the logos. Well my source for the stencil material passed away so I had a friend of ours cut stencils for our name out of decal material. Lesson number one, decal material is not stencil material!!! I got everything positioned and started spraying the blue
But the slick stencil material made the paint run off like water! Plus not only that but the adhesive on the back of the material was not paint safe and it reacted with the paint! It was a disaster about to only get worse.
Thinking it was bad but salvageable I decided to proceed that same night with painting the gray stripe. Huge mistake. While trying to carefully mask over the blue without getting in it the wind blew the paper right into the still tacky blue paint. The result, well, it was how shall I say, game over?
It stuck like super glue and pulled a large area of paint off with the paper. I got that familiar sick feeling in my stomach when things go really really wrong. I am proud though, I was able to control myself to the point that I did not have a full on nuclear meltdown in the driveway. I knew I had screwed up and it was all my fault. Cindy could tell I was about to blow and made herself scarce for a while. All I could do was push her back in the garage and go get a beer. It would have to dry before I could do anything to fix it. Clock is really ticking now...
I barely slept that night and about 4 am I had to go to the garage. The name looked horrible, there was no saving that mess. If I could get it off the hull I could at least save myself from having to repaint the white. So very carefully I scraped it off with a razor blade and then compounded the rest off. There was no saving the Hunter 20 logo. It was just too far gone as well
It just looked like you had on fuzzy glassed when you looked at it. The place where the paper pulled the paint off was going to have to be feather edged sanded and repainted as well. So basically I was going to have to repaint all the blue. Ugh. Oh well, no time to cry, I had a lot of wet sanding to do.
It took a few days to get it ready for attempt number two and I had to change the plans of having a white stripe between the blue and gray stripes due to paint bleed under the masking tape. But by Friday evening I reshot the blue and the gray came the next day.
It turned out much better and although I can see every lil mistake in it Cindy was very happy with it and that is all that matters. We would later add a white reflective vinyl stripe between the blue and gray and talk about something that jumps out at you in the dark!
Maybe it will keep us from getting ran over on the water some night.
During this whole process I added a few custom touches to the pop top and companionway slider as well. I added the name to the rear face of the pop top
It was time to start putting her all back together which seemed like it took forever. Every part had to be cleaned and all the old sealer removed. Then new sealer applied, the part re installed, then the extra sealer had to be cleaned off. I worked on that for several late nights till it was time to make her the Memory Maker again
Our old side windows were original and very crazed. My original plan of removing the old plexi and installing new failed when I broke the frame in half. It was too brittle to come apart. So I just made new side windows out of tinted plex
Of course my drill press would have to stick it to me by jumping the stop as I countersunk the screw holes. The bit dug into the plex and just shattered a bit chunk right out of it. Argh.... Lady luck is not on my side at this point.
The port hole windows are really nice in that they open which is rare for a boat this size. But they were either smoked or really hazed because you could not see through them. Knowing how dirty glass can make a car or boat look dirty I was not going to put them back in that way. So after a hour of wet sanding and polishing I think they looked much better
At night I would work in the shop on the all the teak wood and new companionway boards. I changed the boards into three pieces instead of 2 to make them smaller to store.
Now I just need to make birth plywood match teak. That ought to be real easy, NOT! After seeing where the water came in at last summer I made a change to the companionway slider top rails by removing the wood along the bottom of them between the screws that held the rails to the pop top. This will allow the water that lands on top of the slider and pop top to run off right under the rails instead of getting trapped on top and then running over into the cabin.
Once I had all I could put on the boat back on with her still in the garage it was time to paint the remaining few pieces. While there were not many it took one very long night to get them all apart and ready for paint. The next day it was a exercise in creativity trying to get all the parts hung up so I could shoot the white.
I like to think of it as a red neck jungle gym LOL! It looked goofy but worked great. Had to laugh thinking about how our neighbors would re act if we lived in town...
With just a few days to go I worked on relocating battery to the very forward hatch area in the v birth to better balance the boat and get some more storage room in the keel locker. It was a tight squeeze but after making a shelf to sit it on the battery slid right into place in it's new home
with minimal trimming of the opening.
Once all the parts dried it was time to get serious and get this boat back together. More late nights and early mornings plus a few afternoons off from work and she was all but done. I had a good friend of ours come out and help me re install the front and rear pulpits and step the mast the night before Cindy got back. My plan was to have the spreader bar lights on and shining down on her as we drove up the driveway in the dark as the original plan was to pick Cindy up at about 4 am. But they ran late and the sun was up by the time we got back home so this is what she saw instead.
The Memory Make is almost ready to head to the lake in this pic. It took one more evening to install the life line stanchions and the lifelines, then put the trailer winch stand and spare tire back on.
I did not make the proposed launch date of June 10th but I could have. Cindy had to work a couple of days so between that and the fact that she came home sick we moved the launch back to that next Saturday, the 13th. That gave me time to make a new cockpit cover for her so she can stay clean and dry in her new slip! Time to take a break and enjoy our almost new boat!!!!
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