Best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.” - Robert Burns

Ayup! Well long story short. I was planning on giving the keel & bottom panels a quick light sanding yesterday to get it ready to put the anti-fouling paint on it. Now, the keel and bottom wasn't really faired to the quality of the side panels because once they're covered in black anti-fouling paint and in the water no one will see them. As soon as I put the small sanding block to the bottom I immediately cut right through the primer onto the epoxy coating underneath! Doh!

So what to do. Say 'screw it' and just anti-foul over it or put more primer on? Hmmmm? My buddy Peter had pretty good luck with an epoxy primer he got from Benjamin Moore so I called the store in Ottawa. They don't sell that exact kind Peter used but had a new brand. So off I went to Ottawa to buy some more expensive paint! *Sigh*

In order to get a new coat of primer on the boat the old layer has to be sanded (Keyed) so the new primer can bond to it better. I started that this morning, doing it all by hand so I didn't burn too many holes through the primer. It takes the fine touch of the hand to keep it from cutting too deep.

It goes pretty quickly. The primer is soft. Not squishy soft but soft like chalk sort of. Once you get the orange peel sanded off you end up with a nice smooth hard surface. It's nasty stuff to sand though. Produces a very fine dark grey dust that goes absolutely everywhere!

So originally the plan was to just do the keel & bottom down to the water line for the re-coat. I was planning on doing the sides later once the boat is upright and most of the work is done. I figured it'll get a few bumps, bruises, bangs & nicks along the way so finish fairing and painting would be near the last thing done on the boat. Well silly me just has to try out his fancy schmancy sanding tools (Flexicats) on the side panels.

It becomes evident pretty quick that there's still work to be done on the sides. The blue spots are highs and I've circled the lows in pencil. The low spots will have to get an extra coat of primer before another go round of sanding & primer. These lows are incredibly shallow. You can't feel them except for the slight orange peel in the primer that's left. So that's where today's plan sort of went off the track. I'll get back to the keel tomorrow then put another coat of primer on it. I'll be able to overcoat this primer with the anti-fouling a lot easier. It has a much greater window for overcoat than the other stuff did.

Who knows, in a 100,000 years some alien archaeologist may find this image on a trashed hard drive of a computer server and wonder: "What the f*ck is that?"  :-)

So just when I thought I was done sanding I'm back to sanding. I'm sorry, believe me no one wants to see this tub flipped over more than me.

Standby........