It’s time to prime! And paint!
Priming is usually the most boringest job a person can do. There’s no glory in prepping to paint, the brushstrokes don’t have to be perfect, it’s a necessary and annoying evil before the excitement of the finished product. Of course, aboard Devilfish with her faded paint and sanded-down chocolate-colored fairing, things are a little different! The coat of primer goes on smoothly, like frosting on a cake and makes all the difference in the world. I prime all areas and think that the whole thing could just use a coat of primer to freshen up.
I don’t take photos of the primed areas.
Then it’s time to paint of course. We do the requisite three coats and the painted areas look amazing while the rest looks pretty terrible.
We think that the whole thing could just use a coat of paint over my dreamed-of coat of primer. We talk seriously about hiring a spray rig so it would go faster and so we can really look sparkly. Then we find another rust bubble that appeared in an area we had already gone over. It’s a new bubble, one that developed between when we were chipping and when the paint dried.
Instead of fretting over it we decided that we are not going to aim for “bristol condition”.
Instead we are shooting for “work boat patina”.
Ok, maybe a little nicer than that…
The coat of paint is still waiting. There are other, more pressing things to get to beside cosmetics. We will most likely always have a rust bubble or raw fairing compound or paint that isn’t perfect on Devilfish. Does that make her sail any more slowly? Make her any less our home? Make her any less our ticket to the life of our dreams? A resounding NO!
Again, a sailing picture will have to suffice since I apparently didn’t feel the need to document the finished product.
Sailing Devilfish 