Lackey Sailing | Danusia Phase 2-35

February 21, 2025

Danusia Phase 2-35

Friday

Now that the work of striking and marking the new boottop was complete, I dismantled the beams and supports and focused on masking just beneath the marks, creating the actual line of the boottop; above this line would be topside paint, which was going to be the next coating applied. For now, I masked the entire boat to the line, but I planned to sheer the forward section of the stripe on both sides.

With a level and planar line like that struck, the nature of the shape of the bow sections in a boat like this causes the eye to think the striping gets narrower towards the bow, even though it’s actually wider even as struck. To accommodate and correct this trompe l’oeil, I chose to sheer the forward sections of the boottop–that is, raise the forward end and blend the line into the after portions of the stripe. In this case, I chose to raise the stripe 1-1/2″ at the stem, a number I chose more or less randomly but not without thought and consideration: this height just seemed to fit the bow sections somehow, given the waterline sections, flare, and sheerline. With a square, I made a tick mark at the stem at the new height. Then, I measured along the top of the stripe from the stem aft, making little marks on the tape at 8′, 9′, and 10′ aft–roughly 1/3-1/2 of the waterline length aft, or about where the hull shape started to more vigorously narrow after maximum beam.

Any of these marks might be the starting point for the new line, but in this case the 10′ mark looked like the right place from which to start–this is a subjective and eyeball thing–so with tape stuck in place at that point, I stretched it forward to meet the new reference marks at the stem, creating a gradually-sheered new boottop line by eye between the two points. I checked reference measurement or two on each side to determine that the tape was roughly similar on both sides. In practice, and viewed as one normally would with the boat in the water or from a short distance, this line would not appear obviously curved or shaped, but would simply look right (at least such is the goal). One sees rightness without understanding it; the eye is more drawn to anomalies and wrongness.

Afterwards, I masked off the hull beneath the new boottop line to prevent overspray during hull painting.

I finished up all other usual pre-painting preparations, including rinsing down the shop, preparing painting supplies, and installing a series of additional lights around the boat to spotlight it brightly and improve visibility during spraying the topcoat. It’s virtually impossible to have enough light around the boat at this stage, as keeping tabs on where the spraygun has been becomes increasingly difficult with each new coat applied.