Topside Paint II: "Off-White"

We managed to find a quart of Interlux's "Off White" from West Marine in Anacortes, where we went yesterday to pick up the paint and stroll among the boats moored there.  We were looking a different paint schemes, as well as some of the rigging equipment on the various boats, to get ideas and confirmation of our (Dad's) ideas.

Today involved putting a coat of the off-white on about half the boat, painting the upper hull, and doing some odds and ends (such as epoxy sealing portions of the hatch covers that we'd routed off, cutting the mast to length and drilling a hole (and then sealing it) in the upper mast for the gaffe rope.  Now we have something of a two-faced boat, with about half done in off-white (starboard) and half done in matterhorn white (port).  Now to pick...

I think this last one (of the cockpit) reminds me a little bit of the Space Shuttle Cargo Bay... you know, at 1/20 the scale...

Topside Paint 1: "Matterhorn White"

Let's see if you can tell the difference between the primer (white-ish) and the topside paint (white-ish).  I am getting a bit tired of sanding all these nooks & crannies in between coats of primer or topside paint.  But it's looking more and more finished!  There is one other topside paint we'd like to try ("Off-White") and I'll see if I can post something that shows the difference.

Sand and Varnish. Repeat.

The mast, boom and gaffe are called 'spars,' and they're part of what constitutes the brightwork in our boat.  Epoxy seals them to water, but epoxy breaks down when exposed to UV light.  So that's why we varnish after we've sealed them.  The spars now have about 4 coats of varnish on them, having been sanded in between coats.  It's tough work for a perfectionist, I say.  We did the same thing for the keel piece.

Bottom Paint

What's kind of cool lately is that we're working on what I might call the 'outer shell of the onion'.  Parts that won't have any more sanding, or any other coating on top of them.  The varnished brightwork is one of those; bottom paint is another.  By the same token, that makes it frightening if you're a perfectionist, because suddenly the excuse of "well, this will get covered up later anyway" is no longer valid!

Although the bottom of the hull is already sealed, bottom paint is important because it prevents algae and other organisms from sticking to the hull and degrading it over time.  The particular bottom paint that my Dad found is water-based and ablative, meaning it gradually sloughs off into the water over time, but doesn't have any nasty solvents in it.

The blue part is the bottom paint and follows the design water line except at the bow and stern, where it follows the curve of the chine (and so, will be somewhat out of the water).