With the eternal passion of a thousand fiery suns...

Those who know me know a simple truth: I hate painting. And not in the simple "I hate doing laundry but when I'm out of socks I'll suck it up" kind of way. I really really hate painting. It's messy, tedious, and never turns out the way I want it to. With the eternal passion of a thousand fiery suns, that is how much I hate and loath painting. This may be why I married a scenic artist. She loves it so I'll never have to touch a brush.

When this project started Rachele got excited about the prospect of painting the Phantom in bright shiney new colors. And I was more than willing to let her own that step entirely. Then fate stepped in. Much to the benefit of her career and our lives she received a long over due call from her union to go to Portland and work as an artist on the new NBC series "Grimm." How could anyone pass up such an amazing opportunity? The only problem was that it was time to paint the bottom of the boat. We are already a week past when I promised to be finished with the stands. I needed to be done under it and get the whole jobby back on the trailer. With the family painter gone that only left one option: I have to pick up that cursed brush.

So I picked Rachele's brain about what I needed to do to slather on the bottom paint. I got the brush, drop cloths, thinner, acetone, mask, everything.

Fancy new high end brushes
After sanding the whole boat I taped off the edge of the waterline along the sides, stern, and bow prepping the whole jobby. From there I had the paint shaken at the local Home Despot and began slapping it on. I figured out quickly that anti fouling bottom paint is sticky, gooey, and quick to make a mess. I used the old bow seat foam as a cushion and crawled under to get the whole bottom coated.

While the paint dried our friend the Unsinkable Kate Jordan Rivera came over and helped finish the interior wood and get the keel guard installed. We also mixed up the new topside paint and threw some on to test. It's a much deeper blue than the old. I like it.

The bottom paint curing. Tape will come off tomorrow

The new blue.

I finished the second coat of the bottom paint today. Saturday we'll be able to get the boat back on the trailer and finish the inside and fire up the new fuel tanks and batteries.

Soon.......

New toys and new patches

In the last two weeks three major steps have happened. 1) The trailer has been painted and rebuilt. 2) The underside of the boat has been scrubbed, sanded, and patched. And 3) the major order of new toys arrived.

I'll start with the latter. In early June when I was working on the wood with Dad it was dawning on me how much money all of these fixes were going to cost. I spent some time on line searching for discount parts and pieces but even the most complex combination of eBay, Amazon, local stores, and fly-by-night cheapos still cost over $1k for everything. While Rachele and I have both sorted out full time work and are doing better, we're not doing that well. So I decided to reach out to the family for help. Mike purchased the wood, Dad offered the cover, and most importantly my awesomely amazing sister Kelly and her husband David picked up the big pieces. It's safe to say that without them this project would be dead in the water (pun only kind of intended). I went online to West Marine's site, I picked them because they have local stores (which would prove to be a prophetic decision), and built a cart of dream purchases. This included paint, fuel tanks and lines, gauges, trailer hardware, and new bow railings. To my utter disbelief they picked it all up! I may need to rename the boat The Blacker.

Once all the pieces were in I began with the trailer. I stripped the hardware, sanded, then painted it. Once it was painted I put a new tongue jack on. From there I went to install the new keel rollers. This is where I found the first of my mistakes with the order. I ordered 8" rollers which were not right, the old ones were 12" so they needed to be exchanged. I also realized that the gallon of anti-fouling paint we got for the bottom was entirely too much, we only needed a quart. Thankfully West Marine has a pretty liberal return policy so I was able to make an exchange. Yesterday I got new rollers, paint, and with the dramatic difference in the price of a quart several other pieces I needed, mostly electrical.

 The trailer stripped and painted

New jack, rollers, and bunks


After the trailer was ready I spent a couple hours under the boat sanding, and sanding, and sanding the underside. Once the sanding was complete I whipped the whole thing down with acetone and prepped some gel coat. There were many, many scratched and chips in the old coating so it took me quite a while to slather all the areas with new coatings. Between coatings I also sprayed the old striping and logo with a citrus remover Rachele got from Home Depot. This stuff is amazing, it rapidly gooyfied the old vinyl and glue. For the first time in at least 32 years, maybe ever, the hull does not say "Phantom" it's kind of sad. But worry not faithful reader, Rachele has a plan to paint on the name in glorious new high gloss letters.

Magic orange stripper

Say goodbye

...

As of writing, the last coat of gel coat is setting. Once that is complete I will sand it smooth and begin the painting process. We plan on three coats of bottom paint. From there we can get the boat back on the trailer and finish the side and top paint.

Patched and ready for paint


It's getting close!

Starting to look like a real boat

Huge update today. Ira and our friend Josie came out and helped me get the floor in and the boat off the trailer. By the end of the day we had accomplished both tasks as well as getting the engine painted. As usual, it was messy, smelly, itchy, and all around unpleasant. It was nice having friends help.

First, while Josie and I prepped the wood, Ira sanded and cleaned the engine shaft for paint. fortunately for me and the engine he has much more patience for this kind of minutia than I do. He painted it with two coats of Moller engine paint. It was labeled to be the same color as the engine was originally. It, of course, was not. It's much more of a darker almost gun metal blue. So the engine is now two-toned which would normally bug me but it actually looks pretty good.

Hard to see in this light but the difference in color is pretty distinct.


We started the floor by laying in the center piece Dad and I prepped a couple weeks ago. Last week I had laid in the bow piece. With the top still in it was a pain but I was able to successfully seal the edges and get it glassed in fully. Unfortunately in my haste and excitement to lay in some flooring I neglected to make sure it was strait. as a result when I placed the center piece it wasn't square and there was a sizable gap. It's not the end of the world just kind of ugly.

This is the bow floor piece with its glass skin on pre-installation.

So after prepping, trimming, sanding, resining, and dry fitting the pieces we laid them in. First Josie screwed them down with stainless steel screws and sealing the holes with 3M 5200 fast cure. Then I spent just under an hour in my socks fiber-glassing in the whole floor. Much of the side tabs were bubbled up and extremely difficult to get in with the CSM tabs I had brought around from the under side. This seemed like a good idea at the time but turned out to only cause problems. As a result there are a few sections on both sides that didn't laminate properly and will need a sand down before painting. Again, not the end of the world, just a challenge.

NEW FLOOR! You can see the bubbling glass along the edge, I'll have to fix that once it's back on the trailer.

While the glass on the floor hardened we lifted the boat off the trailer. Originally I had intended on building my own stands to save money. Then my Dad came up with a much better solution. He called his buddies at Master Marine in Mt. Vernon, they have worked on the boat every time it needed any engine service. They were kind enough to loan us some proper boat jacks, two for the stern and one for the bow. We rolled the boat out a touch on the trailer then Ira and I lifted the stern while Josie pushed on the bow. This was to get the requisite 2' of stern off the trailer so we could get the jacks in. Once placed we jacked the whole rear up, clearing the trailer skids by about 1/8". Then we lifted the bow and rolled the trailer right out. All in all, this was the easiest step so far.

 Very surreal to see it off the trailer. Almost like it's flying.

As always, as I look at the trailer sitting there in all of its rusty, no working lights glory I'm daunted by the work that needs to be done

Huge day, lots done, ut as I crawled under to take a look at the outer hull I found much more damage than I would have expected. Sanding, filling, coating , and painting the underside will take more time than I expected, as usual.

Thanks to Josie, Ira, and Dad. Without them it wouldn't be a boat. Which I am proud to say it is again