Hello amazing CF members!
First off -
If it wasn't for this forum this
project wouldn't have happened like it did. There are many, many threads that I garnered great information from and a big thanks goes out to all of those who have taken the time to inspire others.
So yes.... this is going to be a LONG post (14,000 words). My thinking is if I put more info than less then maybe I'll help someone out that is looking to do something similar. If you like metallic
paint, carbon fiber,
lithium,
led lights,
Raymarine, night vision, overbuilt dingies, ripping out a davit system,
solar, hitting bridges, stupid
mistakes and good times - then you are going to like this!
If you aren't interested in reading and think this post is too long then just look at the somewhat pretty pictures. If you don't want to read or look at pictures then please drop down to the comment area and post some
funny comments that may or may not be pertinent to this thread.
This post is tied to a dollar figure so people who are interested can see how $190k translates into physical items. For me it isn’t about how much one spends, it is what value you derived from the
money you spent. And yes, you would spent it differently. Heck – I would have spent it differently if I could do it again.
The grand plan is to set this
boat up to sail to the
South Pacific from
Key Largo, FL. With this in mind, most of the upgrades are very functional. But some, like the
paint, just makes me smile – which has a value.
The Boat
I retired a few years ago but my Fiancé hasn't... pretty much a known equation to spend a lot of
money and time on things that normally would never happen. We purchased Moving On, a 2006
Lagoon 440 (95), from a couple in their 80's. They only sailed it once per year to the
Bahamas so the
boat itself was in amazing condition- super low hours (200 hours on the genset when we purchased it in 2013) and super, super clean. We wanted to sail on the boat for three years before starting any major projects. One doesn’t know what they really want / need until they spend time on the boat.
The First Project: Paint
Why paint a boat that is in good shape?.
Back in 2002 I purchased a
CSY 44. It had that 70's stripe at the top and the paint was pretty dingy. I painted it white and $6,000 later it looked like a totally different boat
I wanted to do the same with Moving On. I think the boat looked great in white - but not awesome. And to be honest - I felt like it looked like every other
catamaran; two hulls, both white with a beautiful woman at the
helm. So I searched the
internet until I found a boat to inspire me - and inspired I became....
I have to be honest – I was super worried that this slick paint job – which looks amazing on a super bad ass boat like a GB… might not look that great on a “larger” lady…. It could be the g string you never wanted to see and I
lost some sleep over this.
So my credentials...? My background in painting? I'm a typical sailor who wants to do most everything themselves. I think all of us are capable of doing anything as long as we have some type of resource to get us started. Of course there were no resources on painting a
catamaran with AwlCraft SE..... So I asked my friend, YouTube – who has helped get me into trouble in the past.
There is no doubt YouTube is empowering – it shows some shlub doing something amazing and you think “I’m as smart as that dude”… the problem is that those shlubs make it look so easy because they’ve done it a 100 times. But lets forget about that – let’s just do it.
I researched tons of places looking for people who have painted their catamaran - and the suck fact, I didn’t see that many people talking about shooting AwlCraft SE at all. There were just a few photos of a boat painted with SE and one dude painting the front of his RV an a forum. So I go on YouTube and find all kinds of videos on how to spray cars with metallic paint very similar to SE. For those who don't know, AwlCraft SE is a base coat / clear coat - much like car paint. The huge bonus of this system is that you can fix it. The two huge drawbacks are - you'll NEED to fix it as it is softer than Awlgrip... and it is extremely difficult to spray metallic paint even for professionals.
Before I bought the paint I talked to my friend who owns the best body shop in the keys. He has a paint booth and has painted a few smaller boats so he was familiar with the process and type of paint. He pretty much laughed when I said I wanted to paint the boat metallic silver. Multiple times he warned me against metallic... but you know how that works - once you fall in love with a color - that is the color it is going to be.
We waited until the rainy season was over and then pulled the boat and started to
work. Foreshadowing - it was unseasonably wet.
As most of you know, anytime you are painting a boat the real
work is happens before the first batch of primer is mixed. We spent over a month prepping the boat.
Boat Yard in
Key Largo, FL (5 minutes from my house - that was a positive - and they let you do all the work - even more positive).
We brought over a
trailer - which really is a must when you are working on a project this size. So many tools and expensive chemicals that you don't want walking away. The scissor
lift made life much easier for prepping and painting the boat – but you have to pay for a larger space. Not only did we have to add room for the
lift but for the structure to cover everything.
And let the work begin....
Removing all the thru-hulls, boot stripe and starting the fairing. I wish we had the air tools in the beginning as the project would have been way faster. Nothing like an air tools to sand the sides of the hulls.... so freaking nice.
Not like the stripe was looking good anyway….
3M's magic eraser is the way to go. That cheaper version isn't...
Any scratch / indentation - ANYTHING will show up once the boat is painted so we decided to fill in the boot stripe line that goes around the entire boat. We assumed this line was part of the
mold and for the boot stripe. We did a good job of fairing it in but you can still see it sometimes. Again... the SMALLEST scratch will show up. Even if you don't see it in the primer, YOU WILL SEE IT in the paint.
And there were TONS of other places we had to fair and kept going until every scratch was out. The thing you can’t fix is the undulation that is in the
hull – and when the boat is super shiny you’ll see it. But that is from the original boat
mold. We hope some of it smoothes out once we cut the primer.
Notes This was a huge project and I decided that we could do it all on our own. But one can't discount getting help.... qualified help. My friend and I spent tons of time talking about what we were doing every night at the yard go over what we were doing. But in the end we didn't know what we really were getting into. The one shinning stars were my Fiancé, helping pretty much three days per week, and qualified friends that I would.
It was stressful at times as this isn't a job most people have experience with...so... in a few weeks when the smiles start to go away - either get more help to ease the stress or tell them to take a break. In hind sight I wish I found someone in
Fort Lauderdale that could have came down a few weekends to show us the “tricks” because we made
mistakes and just had to
power through with common sense fixes.