Hi! This is my first post on this forum so please forgive me if it's in the wrong place or otherwise breaches etiquette- I will learn soon!
I'm the new owner of a 30 foot Dutch-built
steel sailboat, and I need to repaint the exterior. I grew up on
fiberglass and wooden boats and knew nothing about
steel going into this, so I've been going down the rabbit hole of information, and have been unable to find any clear consensus on what I need to do. She's been sitting
on the hard for at least ten years, and I have no idea what brand or even type of
paint is currently on. The
bottom paint definitely needs to be redone, but above the waterline doesn't look bad at all, and there aren't any exposed areas and no visible rust or
corrosion anywhere.
I was originally planning on blasting the
hull down to bare metal and just redoing everything to be safe, but I've been reading about
epoxy coats and how they last a very long time and are difficult and expensive to build back up, and now I am questioning if I should blast and
rebuild the
epoxy, or if I should simply sand down the scuffs and repaint the topcoat above the waterline and the antifouling below.
So, considering that I do not know what the undercoat is but also that there is no exposed metal (the topcoat above the waterline isn't chipping anywhere and was professionally done), and no visible signs of rust or
corrosion, would it make sense to blast to bare metal and build up the epoxy coat, or just sand off the antifouling
paint and otherwise prep the areas above the waterline and those topcoats, or blast down and redo everything? And, either way, what brands would you guys recommend for the epoxy, above the waterline topcoats, and below the waterline antifouling?