Okay... So with the bottom all masked off, it was time to start blowing the blue pearl base. BTW this blue is actually a General Motors color. It is regularly seen on 2003 - 2005 Suburbans, Tahoes, Corvettes and Cadillacs. It is a very pretty dark blue with a heavy pearl and some metal flake for light refraction. The White is from a three part Cadiallac Ice White, which has been a staple color for the manufacturer for the last ten years or so. I chose not to go with the pearl to preserve the super-clean aesthetic. My last boat was mostly pearl white with this blue, and a lighter one for graphics. I noticed then that the white pearl, while quite beautiful by itself, tends to look a little dirty when you pair it up with the darker pearls. Don't get me wrong, the last boat came out amazing, but for a sailboat, I wanted to stick with that ultra-clean look that one sees on the really high-end yachts. To me it is just about as beautiful as a sailboat can get, and always makes me look twice.

Anyway... I laid out the first coat of blue... yeah, that's that beautiful color I remember and love so much...




Oh dadgumit! Remember the problems I had on transom with the white base lifting? Guess what? As I was checking the paint to see if it had flashed enough to apply the second coat, guess what I found up on the forward port side? Yup, from the bow line back about a third of the way, the base had bit through, and reacted with that darned primer again... >... Okay, by now I have just accepted that this was going to be the battle of the project... So away we go wet sanding back to get rid of all the cratering caused by the lift... for the most part, back to the gel coat. By now, I have sanded my hand raw (wet sanding paper is very abrasive on skin -- ie the hand holding the paper) and now my ring finger is bleeding and getting all over the surface I am trying to prep... Lovely...

So I get it all fixed and feathered back in. Now I have to go back and re-base it, which doesn't bother me too much since the blend will be hidden when I dp a couple of drop-coats of the paint to make the pearls stand up, which is an old painter's trick for overcoming the mottling that occurs with nearly every spray gun I have ever used. This consists of cranking up the air pressure to super atomize the material, and then standing back about twice the normal distance, holding the gun at a 45 degree angle to the surface and dusting the micas over the surface. The result is a much deeper, uniform appearance, and is also a really cool of camouflaging imperfections that might have been missed. It worked for the most part. It still lifted a bit, but not nearly as bad as before. The two things that occur to me at this point is: 1. no one will notice it from 10 feet away or on the water, so no big deal, and 2. this is all moot the first time I accidentally put her into the dock in a fluky wind and strip the side. This isn't one of those things one wished to happen, but like when talking about going down on a motorcycle, it isn't a matter of "if", as opposed to a matter of "when". Besides, it is my sense of personal performance that makes me upset about this. It sure isn't the first time I have had a paint job turn up problems that require rework, and it sure as heck wasn't the worst (I once did a car - complete paint job - that the paint self destructed on - long story, but as it turned out, it was a bad paint batch from the factory - and my simple splash and deliver turned out with a full body strip, redo all the bodywork on the car, prime block and seal, and try again - 30 hour job turned into a 300 hour nightmare, which incidentally ended up being entirely paid for by the paint company (I am legally not at liberty to mention which one)).

Suffice it to say, I got the base completed, finally, and once dry, unmasked it... The result? Nice...







Even without clear, I was able to tell exactly how it was going to look finished... Okay, now I am starting to feel better about the world in general...

The HAWK (104.1) is playing killer tunes from the 80's and 90's - they call it Sunday Flux Capacitor - My paint is starting to behave, and I am starting to see the finish line... Now it is time to let it all dry up nice and tight. The wonderful thing about base coat is that it is much like lacquer; it dries really fast, and can be worked with or recoated, in a very short time.