Painting The Hull | Sanding & More Primer

When the grey primer was cured I removed the masking tape.

Here is the view of the transom with tape pulled. The Ship's Cat popped in to carry out an inspection.

And here is a view of the front of the hull.

It looked really nice. Now I had to sand the primer to remove the brush marks.

Here I am using a work light to sand the bottom panels.

Likewise I am sanding the side panels here.

Here I am sanding the bow in the same way.

I used a soft, flexible interface pad on the sander to ensure that I didn't sand through the paintwork on the curved surfaces, leaving bare patches. Here it is.

I thought about leaving the keel, but sanded it anyway when I sanded the keel fillets. Like this.

Despite my best efforts I still sanded through the primer in a lot of small patches. Look at this.

The grey primer was quite good, but the white clearly needed more coats.

I washed it with water three times to remove any dust, then taped and masked for white primer, as here at the transom.

A fifth coat of white was applied. Here is the view from the side.

Two more coats were applied, making seven in total.

When well hardened I sanded the primer with a P280 grit to get rid of most of the brush marks, like this.

Finally I used a P320 grit to remove the residual marks, leaving a really flat and smooth surface.

That is looking very good!

I will pull the tape when the paint is dry to see how much the grey primer will need to be touched up.