Painting
VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Sat 20 Apr 2013 10:27
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The main reason the boat has been out of the water
for so long was to let it dry out. Fibreglass boats can suffer dreadfully from
osmosis which causes unsightly blisters and eventually serious damage. We had
early warning signs, so we came out, stripped the hull completely in dreadful
weather last November and let it dry over what has turned out to be New
Zealand's best summer on record. Now it's time to repaint prior to
launch.
Here is Damian applying waterproof epoxy paint to
the hull (three coats over two days). He's using an airless spraygun to give a
beautiful even coverage, far better than we can do by hand with a roller and
much much more quickly (although protecting the rest of the hull with the
plastic sheeting you can see in the pictures took two of us most of a
day).
 We're doing the detailed finishing work ourselves;
here I am, hard at it:
 I'm trying to paint under the keel with a roller
where the spraygun won't reach. The curious position adopted is not a yoga
move, but merely a way of balancing using the weight of my right leg to pull my
shoulders up so I can see the job.
And then the antifoul. We were white, but to
Alison's relief & delight that's not available in NZ so we've gone for
a sort of dark turquoise. Here's Damian again, getting plenty of
supervision:
 30 litres of antifoul have now been applied in two
coats and look really splendid, and we're busy finishing of the detailed bits.
Its a bit complicated because we have six props under the boat - you can see two
in the picture above. They have to be painted round, then we move the props
leaving six large squares each of which needs three coats of epoxy and two of
antifoul.
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