Flipping The Boat (Again...)

It was time to flip the boat upright again, for the fourth time. Let the gods smile upon us and make it the last time...

In readiness for the great day I removed the polytene sheeting which had protected the lower hull while I paint-stripped the upper side panels.

This what it looked like, covered up.

And this what it looked like uncovered, in the early evening spring sunshine.

There were a few tasks to complete before turning her right side up. One very important one was to make sure that the centreboard pendant was pulled in completely and cleated off.

Examination of the pendant through the centreboard inspection ports revealed that it was loosely coiled inside the case, like this.

You can't see the pendant but trust me, it was loose.

However, hauling on the pendant from the footwell did not budge it an inch. It was firmly held in place inside the case, meaning that the heavy centreboard was trapping it.

So I climbed on top of the hull and raised the board with the long nosed pliers faced with foam padding that I used to raise it when installing the board itself. This is them.

It was easy to raise the board a few inches while Mrs Boatbuilder pulled the pendant through and tightened it. She retrieved about two feet of rope which would have allowed the board to drop down out of the keel when the boat was turned over, which would have been a big problem.

Another task was to reassemble the build cradle with its spreaders.

All was ready.

We gathered up a big team of friends and family to make the flip which was scheduled for Saturday 3rd May at 5pm.

We had six helpers on each side of the boat, which previous experience told us would be ample.

The driveway had been covered with old rugs from inside the house to prevent damage from the gravel.

I directed operations, having the team carry the boat out onto the carpet and move sideways several feet.

They then lowered the port side to the ground and carefully rolled it over until upright.

So far so good. All was well.

We moved the cradle back inside the garage and applied the brakes to stop it from moving.

The team then carried the upright boat back into the garage and lowered it into the cradle, lining it up with two bits of blue tape to indicate its correct position.

I was too busy to take any pics but Mrs Boatbuilder shot a video, which I will upload when I figure out how.

But the video does show that the whole thing took precisely 6 minutes and 49 seconds, and went perfectly.

Here she is the following day, ready for the final phase of repainting.

What a great sense of achievement!

Huge thanks to each and every one of the team, who then happily devoured lots of beer and home made pizza and brownies.

Fantastic day!

We're Ready to Flip the Boat!

I didn't really think that I would be able to repaint the interior of the boat so quickly.

It took just five days. It is undoubtedly very much easier when the hull is upside down, and using a long handled roller made it quick and easy to paint the inaccessible parts such as the transom.

So today, having surveyed the third coat of eggshell and concluding that it is good enough not to need a fourth coat, I realised that we are ready to flip her upright again.

Now, Mrs Boatbuilder participates in Oxford Art Weeks every May, meaning that the household and grounds are totally taken over by the exhibition and visitors for two whole weeks. Nothing else has any chance of happening.

The art weeks here open in the second week of May, so that leaves just the coming weekend to assemble enough volunteers to carry out the flip.

It is really short notice so I will see how we get on. Otherwise it will be June before I can start work on the topsides, which will be very frustrating.

So, with nothing more to do in the boat I decided to fit the wheels to the build cradle end pieces.

Here I am fastening wheels to an end piece with lag screws.

This close up shows the heavy-duty braked castor wheels that I used on the build cradle so I could safely and easily move the boat around the workshop.

That didn't take long and then they went back inside on the bench to await next weekend.

With a bit of luck!

Cabin Interior | Repainting

It was time to apply paint inside the cabin.

I thought I had used a quality paint the previous time but I was advised by a professional decorator that it wasn't that great.

So this time round I chose the best I could find. This is it.

It is Dulux Trade brilliant white eggshell for interior use, solvent based.

I first painted the stringers and carlins with a brush, to see how the paint felt.

It was very thick and hard to apply straight out of the tin, so I asked the Dulux people if I could thin it.

The rather grumpy lady who runs the store said to use white spirit but no more than 10%, or I would "destroy the integrity of the paint". Now, we don't want that to happen, do we?!

A test with 5% white spirit added to the eggshell caused the paint to flow very nicely, so that's what I did for the entire repaint.

I used the same roller sleeves that I used with the Epifanes yacht paint, by Rota. They are excellent. This is them.

Two rollers were needed, with a long and a short handle. Here they are.

Two coats were applied and at time of writing seem to have done the job.

This is the centreboard case, seen through a porthole.

And this is the roof.

I will see what it looks like when dry but I am really pleased with how this turned out.

Now I need to organise the boat flipping crew …

Postscript

Having said that I was happy with the paint, a close look the following day revealed that there were still some small patches where the eggshell had not fully covered patches where I had sanded through the old paint to the substrate.

The Dulux eggshell claims to be "Self Undercoating", so I didn't bother to prime these patches. I should have known better!

So a third coat was applied and it looks much better now. Sometimes I have to remind myself that perfectionism is not my friend …

Cabin Interior | Preparing For Repaint

It was nearly time to flip the boat upright again, but before I did that I decided to repaint the interior.

The white paint had turned yellowish and no longer looked smart. It would be much easier to refresh inside the cabin while the boat was upside down, so that's what I did..

The first task was to lightly sand all the old paint. My Festool sander was too big to use inside the boat, so I looked around for a small cordless palm sander.

The smallest I could find that were up to the job were all 125mm, and I opted for the DeWalt random orbital sander simply because I already had a charger and two batteries that I could use to power it.

This is it.

It comes with a dust collection bag but a trial proved that it was ineffective and still created a lot of dust, so I connected it to my vacuum cleaner with a conical connector, like this.

Some tape prevented the connector pulling loose from the sander. As here.

This was a very successful modification. I could now sand most of the interior with minimal dust creation.

I taped the floorboard and centreboard case edges and around the inspection hatches to mask them off.

Here is the centreboard case.

This is the inspection hatch in Bulkhead 2.

And here are the floorboard edges.

Then I sanded as much of the cabin that I could reach with a P80 and then a P120 grit.

I could easily reach most of the cabin with the sander, but the storage compartment and the transom were out of reach.

So I made a sanding tool by taping a sheet of medium grit nylon abrasive pad to a long handled roller arm. This is it.

This was very effective in lightly sanding impossible to reach places.

Inevitably I sanded through the paint in some places. This is one in the corner of the roof.

I am hoping that two coats of a quality paint will suffice to cover everything. We will see!

Build Cradle | Reassembly

When we moved the boat out of the workshop onto its trailer I dismantled the build cradle.

I put the two cradle ends behind my workbench and put the spreaders and support blocks in the scrap pile.

I did consider scrapping the cradle ends but thought if I ever needed to put PocketShip back inside for rework I would need them, so I kept them.

That was a very sensible decision, because we will soon need another build cradle when we flip her upright again!

The spreaders had long since been cut up and recycled so I made a new pair. Here I am cutting them to length.

I searched through all of my many boxes of scrap and found all the support blocks from the original cradle.

Here are the new spreaders and the old blocks.

I drilled the spreaders for screws using the pillar drill to ensure the holes were perpendicular, like this.

Then I took all the parts outside and stood the cradle ends on a pair of tables.

All parts were marked up to ensure they were correctly reassembled, like this.

I carefully screwed all the pieces back together, using a big roofing square to make sure everything was at right angles.

This is the reassembled cradle.

I will fit the wheels when we flip the boat.

Lastly I removed the spreaders and put the parts safely back inside.

That was fun!

Dorade Boxes | Stripping Paint

I had decided to strip the interior of the Dorade boxes while the boat was upside down.

I just thought it would be easier that way, and it would not matter if stripper and paint leaked through the drain holes onto the already stripped upper side panels.

I made up a varied tool set of scrapers, brushes and scourers to do the job.

Here they are.

As usual I used an eco-friendly, water-based paint stripper to do the job. It worked just fine. See previous posts for details.

It turned out that a stainless steel scouring pad was the most effective way of removing paint.

Here we are working inside the cabin.

One bucket of water is for washing the scourer, and the other is for rinsing the sponge used to wipe off the dissolved paint.

The mirror is vital for seeing into and around corners.

Tedious and messy but not that difficult, and it's done now so not something to dread at a future date.

Portholes | Stripping Caulk

I posted last May about removing the portlights when the boat was back in the workshop for repainting.

One of the portlights was very difficult to remove.

This was because I had used old caulk to seal this particular portlight in place. The caulk had partly cured inside the tube and although it dispensed easily, it set to a hard and inflexible consistency which refused to release the portlight.

I eventually prised it loose with an old screwdriver but this left a thick, solid ring of hardened caulk on the inside and the outside.

It looked like this.

No solvents that I tried had any effect, so it would have to be cut away.

I used a small slim-bladed pocket knife and a small Bahco scraper with a new blade to do this.

Here they are.

It was painstaking work, taking care not to damage the hull but also removing every trace of the old caulk.

It was successful eventually, and a wipe with some solvent left a clean surface ready for paint.

Upper Side Panels | Paint Stripping

I pondered on what other work I could do while PocketShip was still upside down, and immediately realised it would be easier to strip the upper side panels now rather than wait for the hull to be righted.

In fact, I should have done this while stripping the side and bottom panels. It would have saved the time and effort of masking off.

Nonetheless, it had to be done so I set about covering the newly painted hull to protect it from paint stripper and the resultant mess.

I did this with lightweight polythene dust sheeting, carefully cut to fit. This is it.

The material folds out to give a sheet two metres wide. 

This is a view of the fully covered hull from the rear.

I have only taped the sheeting to the rails and to itself to join the two metre wide strips.

I have found that masking tape almost always leaves a mark or a stain if left in contact with paint for any longer than is absolutely necessary.

This even applies to the expensive specialised tapes recommended by expert marine painters, so beware ...

We don't want any tape marks on our lovely new paint!

This is the stripping kit.

I'm using water-based, eco-friendly paint stripper and a sharp Bahco scraper. See previous posts for further information on how this works - it's very effective.

This is the starboard upper side panel during stripping.

And this it afterwards.

This is the port side, after stripping.

You can see that all the paint has been removed, with no scratches or tram lines from the scraper.

This is much easier than sanding the paint off - it's virtually impossible to do that without sanding through the fibreglass sheathing.

That's nearly all that can be done before the flip.

My plan is to strip inside the Dorade boxes while the boat is upside down. I think it will be easier that way.

We will see!

Lower Hull | Touching Up & Prettying

With the lower hull now fully painted and varnished, it was time to apply the final cosmetic touches to make it really pretty.

I had experienced some minor bleeding between the white and blue areas of gloss paint, particularly at the transom but also also where the masking tape crossed over the chine.

So I masked up the errant patches. Here is a corner which needs blue paint.

And here is one which needs white paint.

This is the blue stripe after touching up and pulling tape.

That's a nice crisp line now.

I didn't mask off the bow eye and it got covered in paint, like this.

I carefully scraped off the mess, so it looked nice again. As here.

I think that's it for the lower hull. Time to schedule the flip and to do whatever else we can in the meantime.

Transom | Varnish & More Tape Damage ...

I varnished the transom in parallel with the rub rails.

In theory this should have been straightforward and the final phase of refinishing the underside of PocketShip, but as we shall see I encountered a few problems with the paint ... again!

First I wet sanded the old varnished surface using a P400 grit. Like this.

I then masked off the painted surfaces using 3M 218 tape, as I have been doing since finding that the vinyl tape I had previously used was damaging paint when removed.

This is the transom, taped up for varnish.

I applied the first coat of varnish and pulled the tape. Unfortunately the tape tore off some of the blue and white gloss.

This is the damage to the white stripe.

And this is what happened to the blue stripe.

I left plenty of time for the paint to cure before applying the tape, so I was somewhat disappointed about this latest issue with masking tape.

I wet sanded the damaged areas to flatten the surface, ready to be touched up or repainted.

I then taped up for the second coat of varnish using 3M 244 High Precision tape, which is a lower tack than the 218. This is it.

This works well. It doesn't give quite as sharp an edge as the 218, but it doesn't damage fresh paint. It is the most precise tape in the 3M professional decorator's tape, so it will have to be used.

I wet sanded the varnish with a P400 grit and applied the second coat. This is what it looked like when I pulled the tape.

You can see the flattened out damage on the blue stripe. It was obvious that the blue and white stripes would need to be repainted, but I hadn't thought about how to do it at this stage.

Again I wet sanded the varnished transom with a P400 grit, feather edging it with the painted stripes.

Epifanes recommend doing this between coats, and it worked really well on the rub rails. This is how it looked.

The third coat of varnish was then applied. Here it is before the tape was pulled.

And here it is after.

It was starting to look really good, apart from the damaged gloss paint. I am thinning the varnish with 10% Epifanes thinners on all coats, as I did on the rub rails, and it dries with no sags or brush marks.

I applied two more coats of varnish in this way.

Ready for the seventh and final coat of varnish, I decided to wet sand the whole of the blue and white stripes at the same time as the varnish. Again a P400 grit was used. Like this.

I then touched up the damaged areas with white and blue gloss.

My plan was to completely repaint the stripes before applying the final coat of varnish. Here I have taped up for blue gloss.

I am using the 3M 218 tape here, because it doesn't damage the surface of the varnish. It dries to a harder finish than the paint.

I applied two coats of blue gloss, wet sanding between coats. I added 10% Epifanes Easy Flow to the paint, and it flowed beautifully and dried with no brush marks.

Then I did the same with the white stripe. It only needed one coat to cover well.

This is what the transom now looked like.

So we were now ready for the final coat of varnish. This is the transom taped up in readiness.

And here it is with varnish applied.

And, finally, here is the finished product. Looking very nice indeed.

It was annoying that I had experienced more tape damage, but I now know to use the low tack 244 tape on painted surfaces wherever possible.

It doesn't give as sharp an edge as the 218, but it's plenty good enough. If you didn't know which tape had been used you really couldn't tell the difference.

So that's it! The entire underside of the boat has been reworked and refinished and is now ready to be turned right way up again.

It's still pretty cold and wet here in the UK, so I will wait until the weather improves before summoning a crew to flip PocketShip ... again!