Black is the New Blue

My to-do list is still enormous, but I knocked off a couple of items over the past few days that I would have saved for last because they are sort of 'fluff' projects.  They got bumped up because I'm waiting for a few things to arrive that are preventing me from finishing some of the more 'meaty' tasks.

The other day I was in the cabin scrubbing and just got fed up with the smell of bleach and cleaners so I took a break and while I was down on the ground started picking at some flaking bottom paint.  I picked up my carbide scraper and started going to town on the paint.  It was pretty satisfying at first; seeing the chips fly off, revealing a painter's archaeological dig, with years of different colors revealing themselves as I went.  I had planned to 100% strip the hull, but I ended up just scraping it and removing all the loose crap.  I've done a full hull take down before and it is not a pleasant job and to be honest, I'm about done with non-pleasant jobs for the time being.  I'll consider doing that next year, but for now... screw it.

So after three hours of scraping I decided that I had done enough and the surface was good enough for me. I was still doing well on time for the day so I taped up the hull at the boot stripe and broke out the bottom paint.  I changed the color to blue because I never liked red, but to be honest I wanted to paint it green, but the super cheap bottom paint I bought (JamesTown Distributors Underdog) only came in red, blue, or black. Normally I wouldn't cheap out on bottom paint, but since the boat is going into freshwater for the first season, the $79 price tag was justifiable.  All I am really doing is making it pretty, there is nothing to foul in Lake Winnipeaukee (No zebra mussels yet).

Anyway, I got everything painted except for the area under a few of the jack stands.  There are two jack stands that I am a little worried about moving.  I have 9 of them that I regularly jockey around, but there are two that are chained together on opposite sides and the chain is drum tight, which leads me to believe that they want to slip.  I need to position a few more on either side of them before I move them.  I don't want to risk dropping the boat for something as stupid as cheap bottom paint.  It would pretty much ruin my day.

Yesterday, because I am notoriosly bad at taping straight lines, I lured my wife over to tape the top and bottom of the bootstripe which I wanted to change to black to contrast the blue bottom paint.  She is very anal about proper straight lines and true to form, she taped the bootstripe much better than I could have. Painting the bootstripe is really satisfying with a 2" foam roller, it only takes about 30 minutes to do the whole thing and the way the new 'hot dog' foam rollers lay down paint is amazing.  I'm sure they have been around for a while, but as a teenager, I only remember doing Dad's boat with a brush which isn't nearly as satisfying.

With some of the 'fluff' projects completed, I will now have to focus on my six (maybe seven) remaining 'real' tasks:

1. Kiwigrip cockpit
2. Install propeller shaft and new coupler
3. Install and mount winch coaming blocks and winches
4. Install genoa track
5. Build composting toilet
6. Measure and build up forestay
7. I found a small antifreeze leak when running the engine around the exhaust manifold.  I ordered all new gaskets for the manifold, but I need to id the leak.

Of course there are a million little things but these are the ones that will take time.