paint

Thanks for sharing the process with us, Stefan.  It's always very intimidating to even ponder giving any boat a paint job so this gives us all a much appreciated glimpse of what to do and expect.  Will you be ready to sail by next spring?  I'm itching to have a closer look at your Contessa and perhaps we could have a CO26 Rendezvous in and around the Thousand Islands next season.

Good luck with the rest of the process.

José

the only problem with painting is that if you knock off a decent job, you'll see every little imperfection.  i had 2 coats of primer, and it felt babys butt smooth and looked really good, but after painting the print thru still shows up.  you can even see where the old decals were on the bow (name).  you can see the hard spots in the hull where the chainplates are, and you can see every dimple 2" below the hull deck joint where the hull is riveted to the deck.  that goes part in parcel with a dark glossy finish....  as for the decks, i sprayed 2 coats of primer over the whole thing, and then sprayed perfection off white, mixed 50 50 with flattering agent for all of the "smooth" parts.  i'm now rolling on light grey with the intergrip grit mixed in for all the non skid.  it's working quite well, pretty uniform distribution of  sand but you can see the odd roller mark....    i'll tell you in 2 years if it was tough enough.......   

perfection is a pretty easy paint to work with.  you'll hear people call it imperfection, but i personally think that most of the work is in the prep.  i'm not the smarted cat out there, but I can read the directions and follow them and it turned out ok...  you can screw up a job with sterling paint if you halfass the prep......  i've never painted anything bigger than a snowblower in my life, and i got a relatively decent spray job down.  it's better than any other homemade paint job i've seen, and i don't have $8 000 into it.  theres 3 or 4 decetn sags, and I dont think i'm going to touch them at all.   

if you get checking on the internet, theres all kinds of different paint you can use - awlgrip, awlcraft, imron, jet-glo, perfection, etc etce etc.  the main thing being that they're 2 part polyurethanes.  theres 2 kinds, acrylic and polyester based but i'll leave that fact finding mission up to you.

I believe the topsides on my 1980 Contessa look o.k. for now. I plan to delay painting them for as long as possible. A scrubdown with "Hull Brite" and two coats of wax will have her looking her best and the wax seems to retard that yellow scum line (from heavy metals in the water) forming above her boot stripe.
I thought hull blisters were a result of warm water around here but now I hear that electrolysis can cause them as well.
I fixed 400 hull blisters eight years ago and 200 more four years later. I need to haul out and paint on two coats of "Trinidad" as well a change the zincs aft of the propeller and the ones inside the diesel.
Swam under the old girl today. Blisters not too bad this time.