Paint
13 October 2016 | St. Marys, GA
Capn Andy/Warm Summer
So far I hadn’t been aboard Trillium since the hurricane hit and now I was looking for my prescriptions to renew a couple of medications for cholesterol and blood pressure. They must be on Trillium, they didn’t turn up anyplace on shore. I paddled out with the kayak, which I was getting more proficient at, and was shocked to see a foot of water in the cockpit. I looked in the cabin and there was about a foot of water in there also. Until now I had thought the little boat had braved the storm without any damage. It looked like the cockpit scuppers had clogged with debris and the water rose until it started to pour into the starboard cockpit locker, which is open to the bottom of the boat, drains into the bilge, and then can rise in the cabin. If the storm had continued longer, the boat could have sunk.
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I bailed out 15-20 gallons of water and began sorting out soggy cardboard and the contents of the boxes that were in the cabin. One bag of clothing was soaked, but the others were still dry, protected by the garbage bags they were stowed in. The important papers, including my prescriptions, were dry in a plastic bin sitting on a shelf in the cabin. I grabbed what I needed and left the boat, now higher on her lines, and returned to shore.
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Along with the prescription order I ordered more arctic white paint from the online store in New Jersey. I used the smart phone but didn’t receive a confirmation of the order. I emailed the store asking if the order went through, but there was no reply. I called and found out that he, who was the order person, was out of the office and would return the next day. This made me think his business was a one man operation, maybe with a little help. He can be reached online if you search trinity1945. His paint is good, not probably the best. You get what you pay for, and his paint is relatively cheap. It is two part acrylic urethane.
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The Brits next door had their paint woes with paint that might be the most expensive on the market. It made a nice glossy finish, but they had adhesion problems. The paint is tricky to use and humidity and temperature have to be factored into the drying time. The rule seems to be, the better the paint, the more difficult it is to use. If you use old fashioned oil based enamel, just brush it on and it will slowly dry, no problem. With modern catalyzed paint, the substrate has to be carefully prepared and in some cases the paint cannot be brushed on, it has to be sprayed. My paint can be brushed or sprayed, with some attention to added reducer, which is a thinner. I found good results using a paint pad made from sections of a phenolic paint roller skin.
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I finally ordered my paint using the computer and not the smart phone and got a confirmation. This is another delay because I can’t finish my beam pyramids until they are prefinished. That includes priming with epoxy, applying a coat of heavily thickened epoxy with microsperes and colloidal silica (50/50), and then a top 2 coats of arctic white. Then the gluing surfaces are lightly sanded to remove any paint residue and then they are glued and screwed down on the tops of the beams. After the screw holes are filled with an thickened epoxy mix and the beam tops are faired into the longitudinal mast beam, there will be a touch up painting with arctic white. Then we can move on to more work on the decks and cabin tops, installing the new solar panels, rebedding sail tracks, installing winches, and finally getting the mast and sail rig back in place.
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It is a lot of detail work coming up and it will take some time. I feel like it is the downhill part of the whole project. The final part will be doing the topsides of the hulls, including some sheathing repair, and then doing the bottoms which will need repair of divots taken out by the jetty, and bottom paint.
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The image comes from saatchiart.com, when I searched “paint problems”. A number of interesting works resulted, this one is called “Paint”, acrylic on wood, by Muriel Soriano of France.