January 31, 2025

Danusia Phase 2-22

Friday

First thing, I continued the varnish work on the table top with another coat, the sixth and likely final for now.

Next, I finished covering and masking off the decks to prepare for hull sanding and painting.  I masked over various pieces of hardware on the transom, though this might have been premature, as I might damage the tape during sanding.  But that would be easy enough to repair later.

I documented the hull’s as-arrived condition shortly after the boat arrived at the shop, but took several additional pictures now.  The existing hull had been painted (and clearly professionally) with LPU at some point in the past, but the topcoat was now highly oxidized and, in some areas, crazed and dirty from exposure and wear.  I thought the condition was such that it would be better to remove all the existing coating, rather than attempt to prepare it and use it as a substrate for the new work.

After getting set up, I started work to remove the existing coatings from the hull, starting at the port quarter.  Over the remainder of the day, I worked through two sandpaper grits to remove the white topcoat and two layers of primer from the hull–first an off-white layer, and then a gray layer beneath.

This was an aggressive round of sanding, using 40 grit paper to get through the hard and tough topcoat and primer beneath.  Once I’d exposed the gray primer, I switched to 80 grit paper  and sanded off most of the primer.  But I left the final cleanup and removal for the next sanding stage, which would use gentler tools and less-aggressive paper to avoid undue damage to the gelcoat and ensure that the hull remained fair throughout the process.  This stage of sanding would come later, once I’d stripped the bulk of the paint and primer from the rest of the hull.  For now, I worked off the staging, leaving the counter and portions of the hull at the waterline for later when I’d work off the floor to handle the rest.

The hull beneath the paint was in generally good condition, with several small and minor repairs that had been effected during the preparation for the paintwork I was now removing.  I didn’t anticipate much in the way of additional repair work or fairing once I’d completed the sanding routines over the next week or so.

I made it approximately halfway up the length of the hull forward before the end of the day.

Total time billed on this job today: 6.5 hours