Bare-bottomed girl

I suppose this really should read 'bare-bottomed lady', as she is 38 years old; but it got attention.

This status is the product of about 2 seasons of scraping and sanding (with everything else I have to do).  I began using Stryp-Eaze but I had a very bad scraper and made little progress.  I changed to Pettit's Bio-Blast, which I found did not respond to following the directions as they were given.  It's supposed to stay on 15-25 minutes without drying; but I found that on a moderately-warm day, not even hot, it went from gel to utter varnish in much less time than that.  The best tactic was to apply it, using a brush from a cup, wait about 5 minutes and then go at it.  I got a really good deal on a scraper-- with two sets of blades-- at Harbor Freight for $2.99.  No complaints at all with this-- it worked great; but I did rotate the 4-sided blade several times before sharpening it as it did jam up pretty quickly.

I also found that the chemical stripper, having to soak into the paint in order to work well, does not work overhead!  On surfaces that were more on the bottom than on the sides, apparently the stripper merely hung on the paint, softening the very outer layer but doing little else.  So all of the bottom (read that: hardest-to-work-with) places were done mechanically, with 'Dusty' the orbital sander, 50-grit discs and hard work.

Here is a pic from earlier in the season which shows the very bottom layer of paint.  There were, apparently, three layers, all of old-school hard-shell antifouling.  This one was, of course, hardest to remove.  The chemical stripper did not permeate this paint, no matter how many times it was reapplied-- the greenish places are dried Bio-Blast which did not cut it.  For the most part it came off with the orbital sander (which meant that, for the most part, I wore my work home).

(May-Be is my cousin Mike's Capri 26 which was sold in the middle of this summer and relocated to its new home in New York.  This freed up plenty of room to work on mine!)

The black stripe came off well; apparently it was just standard enamel and the stripper ate it easily.  It was always too small and I will be redoing it completely more in keeping with the lines of the boat.


I am sure to have more on this later; but here I will add a reminder that the boottop stripe always has sheer, in both top and bottom edges.  Nothing looks worse than a perfectly-straight boottop, like how this one was.  The top, of course, reflects the sheerline of the boat.  The bottom edge does too; but much less conspicuously. For a boat of this size the bow end might be 2-1/2" above the actual floating waterline, the middle about 1-1/2" and the stern about 2" (I'll post my actual dimensions when I have worked them out). The bottom paint is exposed to the stripe (there should be NO hull color showing, ever).  Without getting too metaphysical you might think of the revealed bottom paint as that thin line of not-yet tanned skin that the woman shows just beyond her swimsuit at the beach.  It looks like vulnerability (a boat at rest should never show her bottom paint to strangers!) but it also indicates strength and hardiness, that she can and will endure whatever these elements hand out.  No one admires a boat that looks like it can barely stay afloat!

This view shows (albeit only slightly) some of the patching I did to the bottom.  The old through-hulls were removed and filled (the two larger circles below and beyond the stand pad).  Below them are seen the new through-hulls, which my daughter helped me install (it's always a two-person job).  The forward one is for the old SR Mariner speedometer-- I got a new fitting from them and almost too late realised it had to be aligned fore-and-aft to ensure the paddlewheel works properly.  I had expected the alignment was done by the paddlewheel itself.

I have since faired the very top of the keel in front-- it looks awfully big here but it's not really.


The other blotches are places where the gelcoat was chipped, not from blistering but just from age.  I filled these using Microlight most of the time, just whenever I had some extra from fairing the deck or keel blade.  This is not the best stuff to use under the waterline; as the filling compound will soak up water; but this bottom will all be sealed in barrier-coat epoxy and so it'll survive just fine.

I also mean to carry the barrier coating up above the waterline in some places, merely to seal some cracks there; so as yet there is no paint-to line or masking involved.

It is important to note that these ancient-gelcoat cracks are not moisture blisters.  One task I had long feared to attempt was to get moisture readings on this hull; but Jerry was checking his C44 in the yard and I borrowed the meter for Diana.  Being so long out of the water it now reads a very respectable 6 and below (out of 22) just about everywhere.  The place along the port side of the keel, where I had detected some delamination and then repaired, now reads under 10.  This might even account for standing bilge water.  The starboard side, however, reads about 16 which is alarming.  I will probe this from inside when I get the chance (before barrier coat) but it may reflect bilge water as well.

(The rudder reads well over 22-- with loud pinging from the detector meter! --which I will address in another place.)

Poor Diana, of course, is understandably embarrassed to be laid so bare and undignified before strangers' eyes.  I told her she has nothing to worry about, that at least it's a very good-looking bottom; but she was very prompt, as soon as I had taken these photos, to rap me in the head with a bit of stray line and then to lash out at my leg as I vaulted out of the hatch--

By the way this still hurts (wearing long pants is like sanding it with 80 grit all day); and I have promised the boat to get the barrier coat on as soon as possible.  At least then she'll be in her pewter-gray underwear, not a bad look for any hull.

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