Our boat may need a complete bottom job

[miraculix]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the advice.

Friday, I met with two people from the marina, and we discussed while actually being at the boat. That is probably the best way to do it and well worth the six-hour ride back and forth.

They agreed that the hull is still OK and wouldn't need a complete paint stripping and redo. The keel should be blasted, and so on.

I will remove the loose paint and rust from the keel, paint it with bottom paint, and be done for this coming season. Then we will haul out earlier this year, October rather than December, and the marina will blast the keel and do the appropriate painting.

Unfortunately, we found the deck cracked open in one spot, and around that the balsa core is wet ... but that is a whole other story for another topic.

[chasmains]

GILow, I just have to ask. What does “FFS” mean? Being a retired Navy guy, new swear words are always fun to hear, and maybe use in my travels. Not hijacking the thread. But you Aussies have some great salty language skills us northerners need to hear about. LOL!

[sailcrazy]

From my experience, I would strongly suggest you bite the bullet, strip the whole bottom (hull), put on a new barrier coat, then antifoul. Your plan for the metal keel seems a good one, but your hull also needs to be stripped and brought back up. We did that to our(f/g) hull, but then, using the boat only seasonally sailing the Medd and now the Caribb, it was easy to just tell the yard to give the hull a light sanding and apply 2 (more)coats of compatible antifoul. That plan worked.....for 10 years. But last year, after drying out on the hard, our hull (no blisters) looked similar to yours. After talking to the company experts at International(we used Micron EU, 66, & 99 exclusively)l, they said the underlaying coats are losing the adhesion(too many coats), flaking off, and the only real fix is to remove it all, and start again; we simply have to many coats on the hull! As blasting is not an option around here, and removing it all by sanding is nasty and expensive-we tried to do a shortcut. We "hard sanded" the bad areas, light sanded the rest, and recoated. We've been in the water now about 3 months....and the hull looks like yours just under the waterline. Now we need to arrange a complete removal (hard sanding), re-barrier coat, and re-antifoul...$$$$$! Our mistake-to much antifoul when it really wasn't needed, and now we've got to many coats installed.
Take yours down now, redo, and know what you've got on your hull. Otherwise, in the end, I think you'll be spending good money after bad, and it will end up costing you a lot more.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by chasmains

GILow, I just have to ask. What does “FFS” mean?

For F*ck's Sake

[more]

Originally Posted by sailcrazy

From my experience, I would strongly suggest you bite the bullet, strip the whole bottom (hull), put on a new barrier coat, then antifoul. Your plan for the metal keel seems a good one, but your hull also needs to be stripped and brought back up. We did that to our(f/g) hull, but then, using the boat only seasonally sailing the Medd and now the Caribb, it was easy to just tell the yard to give the hull a light sanding and apply 2 (more)coats of compatible antifoul. That plan worked.....for 10 years. But last year, after drying out on the hard, our hull (no blisters) looked similar to yours. After talking to the company experts at International(we used Micron EU, 66, & 99 exclusively)l, they said the underlaying coats are losing the adhesion(too many coats), flaking off, and the only real fix is to remove it all, and start again; we simply have to many coats on the hull! As blasting is not an option around here, and removing it all by sanding is nasty and expensive-we tried to do a shortcut. We "hard sanded" the bad areas, light sanded the rest, and recoated. We've been in the water now about 3 months....and the hull looks like yours just under the waterline. Now we need to arrange a complete removal (hard sanding), re-barrier coat, and re-antifoul...$$$$$! Our mistake-to much antifoul when it really wasn't needed, and now we've got to many coats installed.
Take yours down now, redo, and know what you've got on your hull. Otherwise, in the end, I think you'll be spending good money after bad, and it will end up costing you a lot more.

I think he has 2008 Benneteau Oceanis 40 made from vinyl ester, very hard almost not possible have osmosis on boat this year, your boat is made from polyester osmosis and blister is only depended of time.Vinyl ester has fewer open sites in its molecular chain. This makes it much more resistant to water penetration ('hydrolysis') which can cause osmotic blistering.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by sailcrazy

From my experience, I would strongly suggest you bite the bullet, strip the whole bottom (hull), put on a new barrier coat, then antifoul. Your plan for the metal keel seems a good one, but your hull also needs to be stripped and brought back up. We did that to our(f/g) hull, but then, using the boat only seasonally sailing the Medd and now the Caribb, it was easy to just tell the yard to give the hull a light sanding and apply 2 (more)coats of compatible antifoul. That plan worked.....for 10 years. But last year, after drying out on the hard, our hull (no blisters) looked similar to yours. After talking to the company experts at International(we used Micron EU, 66, & 99 exclusively)l, they said the underlaying coats are losing the adhesion(too many coats), flaking off, and the only real fix is to remove it all, and start again; we simply have to many coats on the hull! As blasting is not an option around here, and removing it all by sanding is nasty and expensive-we tried to do a shortcut. We "hard sanded" the bad areas, light sanded the rest, and recoated. We've been in the water now about 3 months....and the hull looks like yours just under the waterline. Now we need to arrange a complete removal (hard sanding), re-barrier coat, and re-antifoul...$$$$$! Our mistake-to much antifoul when it really wasn't needed, and now we've got to many coats installed.
Take yours down now, redo, and know what you've got on your hull. Otherwise, in the end, I think you'll be spending good money after bad, and it will end up costing you a lot more.

I am not sure that this is the only way to do it.

We removed most (not all) of our paint in 1997 but we've never stripped it all the way down to gel coat (in fact we have no gel coat). We've never put on any primer or barrier coat. We do haul it every year (mostly) and our routine is to sand it as much as is practical with the time and money restraints we put on it (we usually get out bottom jobs done in about 4 days, although we've done it in 24 hours). Then we apply 2 coats of whatever cheap paint is available; we had them all. Between recoating we usually have the bottom cleaned about 4 times (in a year). We use the boat 12 months a year. We budget about $3000 for a bottom job including all costs, yard, paint, prep, and hotel and meals for ourselves.

Our bottom has never looked like the OP's. Our keel is lead, not steel, so we have no rust issues but the hull always looks pretty good. There is never a lot of chipping or evidence of thick paint. We treat the lead keel the same as we treat the hull itself: minimally and it looks reasonable when we haul the boat, if not great. Still, four days later it look terrific and we relaunch..

One thing we do is try to keep the hull smooth. We pop blisters if we find any and we fill all blisters and chips with epoxy filler and sand smooth before painting. We race the boat extensively and we win often enough. Our boat speed is not bad.

So in conclusion, we feel that a lot of the common practices for bottom preparation and painting is over done.

Photo: After 12 months (in the tropics)

[SofaKingFishy]

Fellow chessie sailor here- the bay has been brutal the last year- barnacles have been on the war path. Soda blast, epoxy barrier and NON Ablative paint are the path forward. Short haul and pressure wash every other year.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by SofaKingFishy

Fellow chessie sailor here- the bay has been brutal the last year- barnacles have been on the war path. Soda blast, epoxy barrier and NON Ablative paint are the path forward. Short haul and pressure wash every other year.

No in-water hull cleaning?

[b.needalman]

Redoing the bottom is expensive because it's a hard job. Sanding is the cheapest for the DIYer, but the most labor intensive. Soda blasting is popular, but an alternative is chemical paint remover that uses a plastic barrier, such as Peel Away.
https://dumondglobal.com/products/peel-away%C2%AE-1

Stripping the paint will likely damage the gelcoat surface. Apply a full barrier coat, such as Interprotect.
https://www.interlux.com/en/us/boat-...rprotect-2000e

I've done the job twice.

[miraculix]

Originally Posted by SofaKingFishy

Fellow chessie sailor here- the bay has been brutal the last year- barnacles have been on the war path. Soda blast, epoxy barrier and NON Ablative paint are the path forward. Short haul and pressure wash every other year.

That is unfortunately very true. The barnacles have not only been on the war path but also on steroids … in the last year. I had to clean the paddle wheel from the speedometer almost every day..

Originally Posted by fstbttms

No in-water hull cleaning?

What can I say, the water quality is not that appealing and I would wonder if you could seen anything in that brownish muddy water…

[PhilipL]

Get a plasterer's pole sander and some mesh sanding roll. Keep a bucket beside you and wet sand whilst standing up. Wash down with soapy water. Doesn't take too long and you'll save a lot of money.

Mine was worse than yours.

Also, I found that red oxide paint has been the best base layer for my keel after I did a rough go over the rust spots. I did it about 3 years ago and it is still holding up.

I work on the idea that once the boat is in the water the hull doesn't need to be of museum quality.


I am a cruiser and not a racer.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by miraculix

What can I say, the water quality is not that appealing and I would wonder if you could seen anything in that brownish muddy water…

I guarantee that wherever you are on the Chesapeake, there are dive services doing in-water hull cleaning for boats just like yours every single day. I can't believe people will complain about bad barnacle growth is and then go a year or two without cleaning their hulls

[justlearnin]

What about splashing it and takeing it to somewhere it can be done cheaper ie mexico.

[Peeew]

I don’t know where you are on the Chesapeake, but prices vary a lot. Generally can save a lot of money by getting away from Annapolis or Norfolk for example and sailing to Deltaville for work. I’m sure there are other places but that’s where I go.

[merrydolphin]

Originally Posted by GILow

I just slipped our new boat. 1978 Kelly Peterson.

The bottom was a dog's breakfast.

I was surrounded within minutes by a swarm of knowledgeable types telling me I'd need to dry it for months, soak it for months, peel it, blast it, scrape it, replace it... the list was endless. One guy was talking AU$50k.

FFS!

Once I'd had a chance to get rid of the noise I had a proper look and figured out it just needs a bit of elbow grease and some application of brain cells.

There's a predatory bunch that hang around marinas predicting doom and hoping to cash in on the insecurities of boat owners. Frankly, they verge on the line of criminal in their approach.

Find someone trustworthy and knowledgeable who doesn't stand to profit from your decision and get their opinion. Nothing I saw in that video would worry me but I know nothing about modern production boats.

Congrats on a nice boat. I had a 1981 KP 44 one of the last ones. Great boat. I never had any structural problems nor significant blister issues. I just sand and paint I always used ablative paint so no significant build up. Enjoy. I put tens of thousands of miles on mine. Need any info. Let me know. Capt Fred.