Cabin Roof | Applying Non Slip Finish

The time came to gird up my loins and apply the non slip finish to the cabin roof.

Everything was ready - the non slip panels had all been carefully masked off with tape, ready for application.

I started on the starboard side by covering up the surrounding areas with polythene sheeting, in case of mess. This is what it looked like.

Next step was to apply a coat of gloss to the panel and cover it with the non slip material.

This is what I am using.

It is Griptex 730 12 from AwlGrip and was recommended by my go-to paint supplier at BoatPaint UK.

I am using the Fine texture finish, again as recommended.

The material can be mixed with paint and sprayed, or applied by roller. Or it can be 'broadcast', which entails sprinkling plenty of compound onto a coat of fresh wet paint.

I chose the latter, which some YouTube experts say is the best.

In the pic you can see the sugar shaker which I am using to apply the compound, and a ladle and funnel which is the only sensible way to fill the shaker.

And so the first coat was applied. Here it is.

You need to apply a lot - and I mean a lot - of compound to ensure that the surface is properly covered, with no bald patches. This means that there is a lot of wastage, but I guess that is the price we pay for a good finish.

This is a close up of the applied compound.

The following day when everything was dry I vacuumed off the excess compound and applied a sealing coat of gloss to the non slip finish.

This was left to cure overnight and the tape pulled to reveal the nonslip cabin roof in all its glory.

This is what it looked like.

Not bad, but the sealing coat was a bit patchy. I shouldn't have been surprised - all other applications of gloss have required more than one coat.

So I taped up the starboard cabin roof yet again and applied a second coat. This is what it looked like when the tape was pulled.

That was much better. So two sealing coats would be required for the rest of the boat. Now we knew.

I then moved on to the port cabin roof, which was a lot quicker and easier with the learnings just gained.

This is the port cabin roof after its second sealing coat, with tape still in place.

That was looking good, so I pulled the tape and this was the final result.

I think that looks fit for purpose. It's neat and tidy with good colour and a nice matt finish, and the fine texture is perfect for this size and type of boat.

The next candidate for non slip finish is the cockpit deck. Hooray!

Finished Parts | Test Fit

I thought it would be a good idea to check that all was well with the finished parts that were now available, so I made a quick test fit.

This is the tabernacle, stood in position in the forward deck well.

That looks OK.

Next came the companionway slide and the acrylic drop boards.

Looking good!

Everything then went back inside, out of harms way.

Tillers | More Varnish & Finished

I mentioned in the last post about the tillers that I thought a couple more coats of varnish might be required, and that was indeed the case.

I wet sanded them with a P400 grit before applying the next coat. Here they are curing on the bench.

One final coat was needed but I used a fine nylon abrasive pad to prepare the surface rather than sand it again. That was all that was needed.

Here are the tillers with the pad.

And here are the finished articles.

Another job done, and ticked off the list.

The tillers then went back inside the house to await deployment.

Painting Update | "It's Too Darn Hot!"

 It's very, very hot here in the UK this week.

Record breaking temperatures, and very uncomfortable without air conditioning and a plunge pool!

So I'm taking some time to catch up with this blog, because I can't do much else.

We're approaching the end of the workshop upgrade to the upper hull. When that is complete it will be time to move Journey back outside, onto her trailer again.

In the meantime we have painting to do - quite a lot of painting.

The non-slip panels need to be applied to the cabin roof and the cockpit deck, which requires two coats of paint.

And the rudder needs to be finished to my satisfaction, with its sixth coat of paint.

However, temperatures inside the workshop prohibit this activity.

This is the climate in here as I write at 1900.

It's 33°C and rising. It was 26°C this morning when I opened up.

That's too hot for painting.

The Epifanes technical instructions state that 30°C is the maximum for varnish, and 28°C is the maximum for mono-urethane gloss.

I could already tell that was the case. The varnish that I applied to the tillers earlier today was curing as I brushed it out, and is now completely dry.

So... I have to wait until it cools down before I can continue.

I will see what else I can be getting on with in the meantime. Time to consult the To Do List.

To quote Cole Porter - "It's too darn hot!".

Rudder | Gloss Paint

It's been quite a while since I posted any news about the rudder.

It was April when I reported problems with masking tape damage on the blue gloss. There has been a lot of activity since then, spread out over two months, but none of it very exciting or worth pics and posts.

So here is the update. It's quite a saga, so I wouldn't blame you if you skipped to the end to see the outcome. Anyway, here goes.

Following the tape damage I wet sanded all the blue gloss with a P400 grit and taped for more grey primer where it was needed.

Here I have taped the blue stripe for primer.

And here I have applied more grey primer, covering the bare substrate.

Next came another coat of blue gloss. Here it is.

I tried using a wider brush - 38mm (1 1/2") which seemed to help get a smoother finish. Here it is, with the roller.

Nonetheless, the third coat of blue and white gloss was somewhat patchy. Here is the rudder after the tape was pulled.

It looked OK from a distance but would not survive a close examination.

So I wet sanded the whole rudder with a P400 grit. Again. Here we are doing so.

So now we were back to a smooth surface, ready for the fourth coat.

The fourth coat of blue and white was applied, but once again it wasn't really up to expectations regarding finish and the edges on the blue stripe.

So once again I wet sanded the whole rudder, and got ready to apply the fifth and hopefully final coat.

Here I am sanding.

I took extra special care when applying the fifth coats of blue and white paint, and I was delighted with the finish on the white and then lastly the blue gloss. It looked perfect.

Here is the blue paint.

It looked great until the tape was pulled and very obvious bleeding was revealed.

Here it is.

That ruined the whole thing, despite the excellent paintwork.

The bleeding was my own fault. I forgot to burnish the edges of the 3M 216 tape which I use for critical and tricky edges like this.

I thought about trying to touch it up but quickly realised it would look awful, so resigned myself to a sixth coat.

Here I am deploying the usual P400 grit to wet sand the whole rudder. Again.

We will see how the sixth coat turns out!

Tillers | Retainer Pins & Varnishing

The tillers (one main, one spare) had been sitting in the workshop rafters for a very long while while more mission critical work took place, but between tasks I decided to start work on finishing them, ready for installation.

After all, the rudder was being repainted and looking good, and would soon be finished itself.

I had occasionally given a passing thought about how to retain the tiller in the rudder stock, but never actually made a decision.

Then recently while searching for other fittings I came across fast pins.

Fast pins have a split ring at one end and a spring-loaded ball bearing at the other, allowing them to be quickly slid through a hole to secure it in place. Kind of like a self-fixing clevis pin, I guess.

I immediately thought they would be good for retaining the tiller, and bought some.

Here they are.

I selected 8mm diameter pins. They are 38mm in length.

Here is one in close up. You can see the ball bearing which will hold it in place on the other side of the aperture.

I thought they were worth a try at least. It would mean making a hole in the end of each tiller to take a pin, so I set about doing that.

First came a test, before committing the tillers to the drill.

I wanted to drill a 14mm or 12mm hole through a test piece and fill it with epoxy resin, and then drill an 8mm hole for the fast pin.

I found that I only possessed a 13mm drill bit, so that had to suffice.

Here are the two test holes filled with thickened resin in a piece of scrap MDF.

I drilled an 8mm hole through the resin, and tested the pin.

Here is the pin in one side of the hole.

And here is the other, with the ball bearing holding it in place.

It slides in easily, but also pulls out quite easily too. That might not be a great idea for holding a tiller firmly in place.

I had made up my mind anyway that I would have some means of securing the tiller and if a fast pin was not good enough, then something else would be. Like a clevis pin, say.

So I went ahead and drilled a 13mm hole in the end of each tiller, like this.

As with the test piece, these holes were filled with thickened epoxy resin, and then an 8mm hole drilled in the centre of each plug. Like this.

Here is the finished product, on both tillers.

It merely remained to revarnish the tillers to await deployment.

I didn't bother to strip the old Coo Var varnish - I just wet sanded it with a P400 grit and applied several maintenance coats of Epifanes varnish.

Here are the tillers after their fourth coat, curing on the bench.

Two or three more coats, and they will be finished.

Cabin Roof | Preparing for Non Slip Finish

Work on the cabin roof started quite some time ago, in parallel with other activities.

I wanted to take my time preparing for the intended non-slip finish, because I didn't really know how to go about it.

The cockpit deck would also receive a non-slip surface but I decided to do the cabin roof first and in isolation, just in case it all went wrong and required rework.

The first realisation was that the jib cleats were in the way and required removal before preparation could begin.

I removed the port cleat and made a right hash of it, trying to remove the silicone sealant with a cheap sealant remover from the DIY store and making a bad job of scraping off the mess.

This was the result.

Absolutely horrible! And all my fault for acting in haste and not using a decent sealant remover. 

So some damage repair was required.

I did consider trying to make an elegant circular border around the cleats, but eventually realised it was pointless and that the best thing would be to make the whole roof area non-slip and embed the cleats in it wherever they might be.

It was also not impossible that the jib cleats would need to be moved after shake-down, if they proved to be in the wrong place, so the simplest installation would be best.

So I elected to repaint the damaged area and fair it back into the surrounding painted deck, ready for the non-slip finish.

The damaged patch was dry sanded by hand, using P180/220/280/320 and 400 grits.

Here is the result.

Three coats of primer followed, again carefully sanding back between coats by hand to a flat surface.

I used a small roller and brush to then apply gloss, like this.

This is the first coat of gloss paint on the patched area.

It was not looking too bad.

So I wet sanded the gloss with a P400 grit when dry, like this.

Two more coats of gloss followed, sanded between coats.

Here is the third and final coat.

Lastly I wet sanded the repaired area yet again with a P400 grit, in anticipation of the non-slip finish.

Here it is.

Finally came the time to prepare for the non-slip finish itself.

This required masking off the port and starboard cabin roof areas, so they provided an attractive and effective surface for bare feet when they received the non-slip treatment.

I practiced on the port roof, which entailed a lot of stop/start/rework activities. I won't subject you to the agony of the learning process, but will skip straight to the starboard roof with a description of how it was eventually done.

First 18mm 3M 244 tape was used to mask off the toe rail, following its contour along the outer edge of the roof. Like this.

18mm seemed and looked like the right width for the border at the rail.

Next I used the laser level to mark up the forward and upper edges of the roof, again using 18mm tape.

This is the level secured by its magnet to the garage door.

And here is the laser being used to mark in the upper edge of the roof, next to the companionway.

This edge was taped in at 1" from the centre of the fillet on the hood, which again just looked right.

The same method was used to mark up the forward edge.

This pic shows all the edges taped in.

I made a wider border around the halyard cleats, using 24mm tape, like this.

That width of the border again seemed right - any narrower or wider didn't work, somehow.

I used a plastic bottle top to mark up the rounded corners.

This is the front end of the roof.

And here is a view of the whole starboard cabin roof, all taped up.

That all looked good thus far.

Next came the task of preparing the surface for the non-slip finish itself.

This would involve applying a layer of fresh gloss and covering it with a non-slip compound by Awlgrip - more about this in a future post.

So the masked off areas were wet sanded with the usual P400 grit, ready for more gloss.

Here we are wet sanding the masked off areas of the starboard cabin roof.

And this is the port cabin roof after sanding.

Lastly, this pic shows how the repainted patch on the port side blends back into the paintwork.

That looks just great now. All will be well - hopefully.