My original plan was to strip the bottom of the boat completely down to the gelcoat, apply a barrier coat, and put new bottom paint on. However, I met with some pretty fierce resistance which made me rethink the whole thing. I’m still not 100% sure exactly what I’m dealing with. Let me explain.
A big mess with little progress.
To tackle the daunting task of removing years of hard, modified-epoxy (not ablative) bottom paint, I turned to TotalStrip in the TotalBoat line of products. After experimenting in different temperatures with varying lengths of time and thickness of application, I just could not get it to remove more than a little paint at a time. The stuff is expensive, and I was blowing through a gallon fairly rapidly without even making it to the middle of one side. I had to apply it three or four times in the same area to get it to work, and even then, it required a tremendous amount of scraping with a putty knife. While it took off enamel bootstripe paint almost within minutes, it barely did anything to the hard bottom paint. Clearly, this was not going to work.
On top of that, in the small area on the starboard bow where I was finally able to remove the bottom paint, I came across another layer of something beige between the bottom paint and the original green gelcoat. At first, I though it could be an unknown, pre-existing barrier coat, but it didn’t act like one; it could scrape away with a scraper (with a lot of effort) instead of cracking and breaking like an epoxy barrier coat. Someone I talked to suggested it might be a thin layer of bondo, but I have no real way of knowing. TotalStrip had a terrible time softening it (big surprise).
So, faced with these incredibly daunting obstacles, and knowing that in ORION’s 55-year lifespan she has never had a problem with blisters (thanks in part, perhaps, to the unknown beige layer?), I have decided not to try to strip off all the bottom paint and instead spend a lot of time sanding the bottom, feathering paint craters and working hard to make the bottom as fair as possible before applying a few coats of new bottom paint.
While I can’t help but feel a bit of a failure, I’m rationalizing my decision with: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I put her back on the trailer, moved her out of the boatshed to my driveway, and put her on jackstands once again. I’ll be going to town sanding her post-Easter.