I decided that I wanted to add some new graphics to Tortuga, a larger name and port of call on the stern, the TC Turtle logo on both sides amidships and Tortuga again on the port and starboard bow.

These are the old graphics, the new ones will be 40% larger

I didn’t want to invest in these graphics and then install them on 6 year old paint, so I decided to put a fresh coat of Tortuga yellow on the hull. I have always been a “do it yourself” kind of guy, and even when I didn’t have the skills to do something I would try to learn. The boatyard wanted $1800 for the job, based on $200 in materials and 24 hours labor. I figured saving money is almost as good as making it these days, so I thought I would tackle this on my own.

The first order of business was to decide on a paint. I choose Petit’s Easypoxy, a one part urethane paint that can be applied by sprayer, roller or brush. I have used it before and it is a high quality paint. I decided that I would use a method of painting called “roll and tip.” What this involves is rolling the paint on, and then tipping it smooth with a dry brush. Done correctly, you can achieve a gelcoat like finish, as this paint has excellent leveling characteristics. The main problem is that the yellow on Petit’s color card is sunflower yellow, much too yellow for me. I called their technical support and was informed that universal colorant would work when mixed with the high gloss white. It only required that you experiment with it until you got the color right. I took a gallon to William’s Hardware and asked them if they could try to mix it to one of the colors on their color cards.

I love Williams Hardware in Morehead City, they are so helpful. Sometimes I think that the staff must be volunteers, because most days they have about a 1:1 staff to customer ratio and will spend 15 minutes to make sure you get the right stuff, even if it is a couple of screws that cost $1. The store manager spent 20 minutes mixing the color into a can of marine paint I didn’t buy from them. He charged me $3. He worked wonders and now Tortuga yellow has a repeatable color formula. It seems to be a little brighter yellow, but that is what I was looking for.

An actual swab of the custom mix and the hull itself

I realize that with any paint job, that preparation of the surface is 90% of the job. I have completed several marine painting jobs with good results and thought this would be the same. Well, I discovered prepping Tortuga was a totally different deal, it was 10 times bigger than any previous project.

I undertook the project with my existing tools, a couple of inexpensive orbital and palm sanders. Half way through the sanding with the cheap orbital sander, the boatyard owner comes over and “intervenes”. He said he couldn’t watch me torture myself or my boat any longer. He brought out a dual action random sander and demonstrated it’s use. He sanded a perfect little patch of Tortuga’s hull in about 3 minutes that would have taken me 30 minutes. “You need to get one of these” he said.

An hour later and $180 down, I was the proud owner of a Porter DA random sander. I wish I had that darn tool 15 years ago.

Grinding out the dings and rough spots

After I got the new sander, I was able to finish prepping the rest of the boat in about 8 hours of work, which included fairing out some bad spots I had created with the orbital sander. Friday, I was able to finish sanding, clean the dust off and prime all the spots that went deeper than the top layer of paint. I also primed the entire stern since I did some damage grinding off the old graphics.

Prepped and primed, view from the stern

Prepped and Primed, view from the bow

I wrapped up my work around 1pm on Friday, took the above pictures, went back to the Swamphouse and got cleaned up. I rushed home to Durham to try and catch my son Ryan’s basketball game. Hopefully I will get a few days next week to paint and get this project done.

Update:

I got down the the coast around lunch last Monday, and my friend Tom from Richmond met me to lend a hand, and spend some time in Morehead.  Monday afternoon we wet sanded the entire hull with 150 grit paper, blending the primed areas with the sanded yellow paint. This was done by hand, my fancy new sander was no help at all. Wet sanding takes “feel”, using your fingers to feel the imperfections more than your eyes.

The plan was to paint the next day, Tom would roll and I would follow behind tipping the bubbles out with a dry brush. Unfortunately, Tom got called back to Richmond to work, and I was left to do both parts by myself.

The first coat of Tortuga Yellow

On Wednesday, I wet sanded the entire hull by myself with 220 grit sandpaper.  By 1:00 pm I was ready to paint. It was beautiful, the sky was clear blue, the winds we light and the temperature was near 60 degrees. I hire Mike from the Ace Marine to roll for me, and I tipped behind him. I am pleased with the finish, although it is not totally without some imperfections. My weather window was perfect, because I awakened to a brisk, damp and chilly NE wind on Thursday.

The final coat

Next week I will be able to wrap up the project. The graphics are ready, and Wednesday looks like the perfect day to install them. All I have to do is install the new section of rubrail, and tape off and paint the black bottom paint line.

I was blessed with a couple of nice days again this week and scheduled the graphics installation for Wednesday. The folks from Coastal Press showed up at 11:00 and had them installed in a couple of hours. They were a real pleasure to work with and everything turned out beyind expectations. This morning I taped the line between the yellow hull and the black bottom paint, gave the area to be painted black a good sanding, and applied a good coat of black bottom paint.

View of the Starboard Bow

The logo amidship and the Tortuga on the bow (port and starboard) is a new addition.

Today I was able to put a coat of paint on the dive platform. The graphics on the stern are 40% larger than the previous set.

My hope was to have the boat back in the water by the end of January, which means tomorrow. The weather coming in may foil my plans, but I will have to wait and see.