Me and My Boat: Painting

I have to admit that now that the boat is painted it looks pretty good, even if it is a very close likeness to Tim’s color scheme.  This will haunt me for years I’m sure as I will receive an endless amount of crap regarding the subject.  I am tempted to go buy a gallon of the Handicap Blue and paint the hull with it.  Now that there is a good protective layer on the boat, it surely couldn’t do any harm.  This would be done simply to spite my detractors.  There is only one thing holding me back.  Painting the hull was a monumental task and I don’t relish having to repeat the process.  Fine, the damn boat will be white on top with a red hull, fuck it.  Let’s get it done. 

Primer paint

The next step was to tape the trim all the way around the boat.  This would presumably eliminate painting accidents.  Well, as they say, “shit happens”.  Not that I am such a poor painter that I continuously went past the tape line, but there were spots.  The white on the other hand would leak through the trim leaving a nice white drip line down the red hull.  Excellent. 

I won’t bore you with the details of the endless coats of paint I painstakingly brushed onto the boat starting with the primer layers.  Nor will I elaborate on the awkwardness and since of danger I felt while lying on the floor of my garage under the boat, as it was precariously perched on sawhorses; painting the bottom of the hull.  I will just say that I have never before done such a technically difficult paint job on anything, and don’t plan on doing it again anytime soon.

The Finished Paint Job

If there’s anything worth mentioning regarding the painting of the boat it’s this.  After I had put the primer on the cockpit and the main deck (like there’s another one); I came out the next day only to be surprised by large muddy footprints covering a good portion of the cockpit.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  It seems my oldest son in a moment of curiosity, wanted to check out the boat.  Thus he climbed in and took a good look.  Leaving behind the size 11 muddy boot prints I would be confronted with the next day. 

Painting is painting, but the prep involved is an entirely different matter.  Again, a crane would have come in handy.  In order to paint the hull, I had to get the boat off the trailer.  Otherwise, my boat would look as, “Spastically gay” as Tim’s.

‘Spastically gay’, I guess that deserves some explanation.  ‘Spastically Gay’ is derived from the band name ‘Spandau Ballet’ a British pop band which found limited success in the 1980’s.  Also, it is a band that neither Tim nor I can stand; which was the subject of one of our discussions while out on his boat in September.   The derogatory form of which, has been incorporated into our normal conversational mannerisms and is used as an insult to describe a less then admirable condition.  There you go.

So, in order to accomplish the monumental feat of raising the boat off the trailer, I would again require assistance from my buddy Tim, as I had no clue how to accomplish it.  Tim’s plan was simple and eloquent and worked quite well.  It only required three sawhorses (supplied by Tim), some cement blocks, and a car jack.  The boat was meticulously raised off the trailer and placed on the sawhorses.  I could then do what needed to be done.  Once finished, the process was reversed and the boat found itself back on its trailer with a brand new paint job.  No ‘spastically gay’ paint job for me.