Rudder | 1st Coat of Blue Gloss

While waiting for the white gloss to cure I gave the rudder its first coat of blue gloss.

Here it is, all masked off with top quality tape.

I masked off the upper pivot eye with Blu Tack so it would not get covered in paint. Here it is.

That will make painting around it much easier.

Then I applied blue gloss thinned with 5% Easy Flow conditioner, using just a brush.

This is what it looked like.

Not too bad for a first coat! I pulled the tape and when dry moved the rudder inside to harden. 

Here it is.

The blue gloss is more opaque than the white and flows much more easily. If and when I build another boat, I will not paint it white!

Forward Deck, Cockpit & Drop Boards | Final Coat (2)

It was now time to paint the next area of the upper hull - the entire cockpit.

First I wet sanded the overlap from the footwell, like this.

Then the (hopefully) final coat was applied to the cockpit deck, seatbacks, rear cabin wall and transom.

It looked like this.

The forward deck well was repainted at the same time. Here it is.

That looked a lot better than the first attempt.

Lastly the companionway drop boards got the final coat on their second side. As here.

We will see how that lot turns out. I will leave it for 48 hours to properly cure.

Forward Deck Well | Refinishing

I left the newly applied paint in the footwell and the forward deck well to cure. It took 48 hours to fully harden.

Then I inspected the results.

The footwell was fine, but all was not well with the forward deck area.

The deck itself had missed patches and brush marks where I had not been careful enough.

Knowing that I would not be happy to leave it like that, I decided to reprepare it and paint it again.

The vertical surfaces were all fine, so I just burnished them with a medium abrasive nylon pad.

Here I am wet sanding the deck itself with a P400 grit.

This was tedious, but I have no intention of doing it again so it has to be right!

Footwell, Forward Deck, Slide & Drop Boards | Final Coat (1)

The time came to start applying the final coat of gloss to the upper hull. I thought about how best to do this and decided to paint it in sections rather than do it all at once, in one frantic dash.

I tackled the footwell and the forward deck well first. First I taped off both areas to ensure that paint flowed over all edges onto the adjacent section of hull. I would then wet sand the overlap to create a seamless transition when the adjacent section was painted.

This is the footwell after its final coat of gloss.

And this is the forward deck well. The deck, sides, forward cabin wall and Dorade boxes have all received their final coat.

While paint was flowing I applied the final (eighth) coat to the companionway slide, like this.

I also applied the final (sixth) coat to the first side of the companionway drop boards. Here they are.

Throughout this process I was conscious that although the temperature was high enough for painting, the relative humidity was still low.

This is what my thermometer/hygrometer was indicating.

Epifanes say that painting in less than 50% relative humidity is not recommended. Well, I can't get it consistently above that, so I just went ahead anyway. I can't wait for weeks for the perfect weather conditions!

I thinned the paint with 5% Epifanes Easy Flow conditioner, and it seemed to flow quite nicely.

We will see what happens...