Painting the Waterline

At this point the boat has been painted, hull sides, bottom and transom.

There's probably around 4-5 coats on the sides and 3-4 on the bottom. It was harder to get the yellow to be acceptable than the white because the white was being painted on white primer. It took a few coats for the yellow to show its "true color".

View of the boat from the transom, notice that in all these pictures I have taped off the DWL (waterline) for painting with decatur black.

Just another view of the transom.

Here is the bow after bottom painting.

Another view of the bow straight on.

A side shot of the front of the boat.

Here's a closer view of the hull shot near the bow at the side. What's next is painting the DWL black, removing the tape and then clear coating the entire hull with 1-2 coats of crosslinked LPU.

A couple days later and now the DWL has been painted and the tape removed.

I had to lightly sand a few areas where the paint got under the tape and now it looks great. A few days of preperation and I'll be giving the boat its gloss coats and then people who keep asking can help flip.

At this point the hull has been completely coated with several clear coats (clear gloss) LPU with crosslinker. It is time to flip.

...but before I can flip this beast I have to build a support cradle to hold the boat while I work on the rest of it.

At one point I was thinking about getting a trailer immediately and putting the boat on it after flipping. This idea delays that investment and will allow me to continue working in the garage.

I will be building 3 cradles like this one each custom built for their home location under the hull. The cradles will be set on casters so I can easily push the boat around, as I can now.

The 2nd of three support cradles is now finished. The hull shape is almost identical between the two cradles so I used the exact measurements for these two. The final cradle will be much closer to the bow so the cradle angles will much much more severe. Since the keel itself is a straight line, if I build the cradles to have identical heights at their center then the boat will sit perfectly.