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A Bottom Painting Lesson

• This boat came in beacuse the diver was complaining of the paint coming off the bottom of the boat. We told him to come in so we could check it out and see what the problem was and take care of it if it was something that we did wrong. As it turned out by taking the chipping off some of the paint we can see that the paint failed between two coats of blue. What we figured out by looking at gelcoat that this is the first coat of antifouling paint and at some point this coat and the coat that was put on blue has failed. Whether it wasn’t prepped, whether it wasn’t sanded, after that blue we believe there is another coat of blue, a coat of green and then a coat of red which we put on last time. Unfortunately the only fix is to remove it all the way down even though the bottom is stuck and good in other places, the only fix we have is to remove it so that we cannot paint over something that is going to happen again.
• One of the theories is that after 4 or 5 layers of heavy antifouling, the paint gets so heavy it actually will peel off, will break the bond, the weakest bond, which happens between these two blue layers here. We think there are 5 coats of paint on this boat that haven’t been removed. Our package, our policy, in order to stop a paint-sick bottom from happening is to haul the boat out every year and a half or 2 years, sand off a coat and apply a new coat, keeping it at a 2 or 3 coat thickness. This has obviously got, we think, up to 5 coats and one of the theories is its getting so heavy that it is just pulling the weakest link, which happens to be this blue on blue and therefore a paint-sick boat.
• One of the issues we’re seeing here is that as the boat is drying out we’re seeing these paint blisters which is another indication of a paint-sick boat. It is actually loosing its attachment and it’s starting to just peel off. The good news is that it’s coming off easy; the bad news is that it all has to come off. There is no sense painting over these areas because they are just going to fail again and you’re wasting the $200 a gallon paint.

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