Liquid Bling…

Sailing is an art full of tradition and it colors every aspect of it, including sailboat hulls themselves.  A boat’s stripe can relay information such as the year it was built, who the builder and designer were, and even what model she is.   That is why when someone decides to change the color of their boat or stripe scheme, watch out!…there will be many opinions.  As well, the traditional colors you see in the marine industry in regards to sailboats are navy blue, hunter green, maroon, and other variations of blue…we wanted something splashier.

The storm in July that affected the starboard side of s/v Alchemy left some fiberglass damage and paint damage.  Initially, the insurance coverage was only going to pay for the small part of paint that was affected, leaving the rest of the hull with older paint.  The whole scenario changed in regards to this later giving us freedom to choose how we would manage the painting and we decided that since the paint job was looking worn all over we would undertake the spraying of the hull ourselves.  This was a huge job (see previous posts).

After completing that it was time to repaint the stripes.  There is a boot stripe (closest to the waterline) and a hull stripe.  They had been Empress Blue, a quintessential color for Wauquiezes of all types of that era.   The blue always matched the painters tape we have used to paint our houses and boats, and quite frankly, I think we were both just feeling awash in it and were ready for a change…especially after the storm…we wanted to make all this painting fun, with an element of surprise mixed in to get us to the finish.

Our canvas is Sunbrella’s cadet grey which we chose soon after purchasing the boat, so we were thinking a light grey for our striping might be nice.  We had been admiring a stripe on a Beneteau down the street that has been dry docked for years near this restaurant.  We rode our bikes down to visit her armed with our Awlgrip paint chip chart, and low and behold the grey we had been admiring was actually ‘Bright Aluminum’ on the color chart.  This was a thin stripe.  We started wondering how it would look with our wide striping.  Would it be audacious, but not in a good way?  Would it be tacky?  How could we possibly commit such sacrilege and tarnish our boat’s thoroughbred pedigree with a blingy color like ‘Bright Aluminum’???  It took me about a minute to decide we had to do it!

The color ‘Bright Aluminum’ is pigmented by very small beads of aluminum suspended in a clear coat.  Turtle let us know that this particular paint would not be an easy one to work with…after application the beads of aluminum actually settle down near the surface being painted and the clear coat moves to the top, creating a shiny reflective, aluminum appearance…we decided to hire Turtle to spray it…we weren’t up for the learning curve with this stuff.  When you are stirring it in the can it is simply looks like liquid Aluminum and is nothing short of exquisite in my book.  Kind of like ‘Tin Man’ in a can.  Chris affectionately renamed the paint, “Liquid Bling”.

 Earlier in the month we started with the boot stripe.  Alan at Sailcraft gave us a brief tutorial in how to measure so that we had some kind of shot at getting our line somewhat even…the hull of the boat is curved and so it takes effort and patience taping it.  We managed to tape it off and mask it and create a good enough line that it came out alright.  Turtle sprayed it for us and we loved the color!  After unmasking and taking the tape off I noticed that under the transom between the bottom of the boot stripe and the bottom paint there was different amounts of white hull showing…at first of course I thought it was due to our miscalculations but it appears that the bottom paint was actually uneven and now we have a chance of straightening it up a bit.

Chapter two commenced this past weekend after Thanksgiving.  We spent Saturday and Sunday taping the lines for the hull stripe.  We hadn’t managed a perfect job of the boot stripe but figured it wasn’t as critical since it rests so closely to the water…but the hull stripe, that is another story.  This is the icing on the cake and as we were taping for it and getting a bit frustrated having to pull it off five to ten times before we felt we landed it, I came to realize that stripes on boats are not just extra decoration, they help the boat have proportions that look pleasing to the eye.  Without a stripe our boat was looking like a bulbous land bound nautical marshmallow, but as even just the thin line tape was placed she started looking a bit smarter and surer.

So Sunday was spent finishing the taping and then sanding the surface we wanted to paint with the stripe.  We then used denatured alcohol and rags to clean the sanded area.  We wished we could have then proceeded to mask since we knew Monday would be the first warm day in weeks where the painting could commence, however evening dew was not something we wanted trapped under the plastic masking risking the potential for moisture to drip down the hull onto the painting surface while painting was in session…so we waited until Monday morning after the hull had almost completely dried and then masked the boat.  It was a big job because we had to be cautious of all surfaces since even the decks could be at risk for over spray.  As usual, we were working on a schedule revolving around the weather and the last of the warm days we will see here in North Carolina until Spring.  I can say I am ready for some boat projects that are not under an immense constraint of time because a lot of them are enjoyable when not working up against the time clock of Mother Nature…I have learned she wins a good majority of the time…

Turtle started spraying the paint right after lunch at about 1:30 p.m. and completed the spray job by a little after 3 p.m. in the afternoon.  We waited an hour and a few before we started peeling and unmasking VERY carefully as to not touch the painted surface.  It looked BEAUTIFUL!  It was shiny and reflective and just great.  We were really pleased and left the yard at moon rise last night.  I could literally see my reflection in the paint, it had dimension, and as you walked past it the reflection would move and change…It was incredible to me.  I was just imagining what it was going to look like on the water with all the sparkling of the water and the sun…other than blinding other boaters with its reflective quality, I thought to myself how nice it was going to look splashed.

Today, right after I started this entry we went down to the yard to check the final outcome…sadly the paint was affected overnight and the finish is no longer shiny and beautiful like it had been last night, or like the boot stripe turned out two weeks ago.  While keeping perspective that this is just a stripe, we tried not to be immensely disappointed.  The stripe is gun metal grey and flat…which is kind of cool, but not so cool when the boot stripe is gleaming and beautiful…SO, we are not sure what happened…there are a number of factors that could have affected this outcome…we have not talked to Turtle, the painting extraordinaire yet, but hopefully we will be able to figure it out and start from the drawing board.  At least now we have a really good line and crisp stripe so taping it again won’t be such a big deal, but masking an entire sailboat is a whole lot of work and not really something you want to have to do over and over unless that is your official job.  It is kind of fun in a sick way…but a whole lot more satisfying when the end result makes you smile big…

We await the toe rail’s delivery hopefully tomorrow and then we will go from there….until then, as they say, the ten foot rule applies at the moment…at least we have a hull stripe now even if she isn’t sparkly like we had intended…yet…until then I will enjoy growing my fingerprints back…

On another note, I have been enjoying my camera immensely and have been a lot more attuned to working with the light and not just composition.  Most of these photographs are mine, other than the ones Chris took of me and one other of the boat taped from above.  I especially like the one I took of Turtle with the paint fog above.  

You can find the rest of the collection here:  Boat Stripes