I'm done with the base coat on the deck of the boat. I put on three coats of Interlux Perfection Snow White.
The pictures to the left show the boat after I removed the masking tape which was protecting the cabin top and the curved corners in the cockpit. As I'm mentioned several times earlier these were built using cedar strips, and my intention is to leave them natural.
The next step is to mask off the areas on the deck where I will not have a grip surface and then paint those areas. Hopefully the non-skid will be done in a couple of days.
The final step (as far as painting is concerned) will be to finish the cedar strip portions with Perfection clear.
More sanding, fairing, and painting. The first step was to mask off the finished hull with masking tape and rosin paper so that the new paint doesn't mess up the nice paint on the bottom. With the green tape and the pink paper, the boat has a distinct easter egg look.
The boat is just about ready for its final (third) coat of primer. One more light sanding and of course clean up is needed before putting down the paint.
We've decided to go with Interlux Perfection snow white for the parts of the deck that don't have non-skid on them (the same as the bottom). For the non-skid I bought Awlgrip course non-skid beads and we're going with Perfection oyster white for the non-skid areas
Some time last summer, I described building the cabin top using the cedar strips with some mahogany for accents. I fabricated a mast step platform today out of a piece of solid mahogany. This block of wood had to be shaped so that its bottom matched the contour of the cabin top, and so that the top would be level. I did this by transferring the cabin top curve onto the block with a pencil, and then used my table saw to cut grooves that matched the curve. Using a belt sander, I cleaned up the grooves and shaped the curve in the lateral direction (side to side). The picture to the right shows the mast step platform glued to the cabin top above frame 89.
The block was also sized to support a stainless steel deck organizer that I bought from Dwyer Mast.
We rolled the boat back over today and put it on the trailer. Rolling it over was actually very easy. We just put some plastic sheet on the grass and tipped the boat and cradle over and rolled the boat right off onto the plastic. Picking the boat up to get it on the trailer was a bit harder because the paint is actually pretty slippery and it's hard to get a good grip on the boat. However with my two younger sons and my wife helping, we made pretty short work of getting the boat onto the trailer. The only thing left to do once the boat was on the trailer bunks was to adjust the winch stanchion so that it just touched the bow. We actually only had to move it an inch or so from how it came from the factory.
The pictures to the right show the boat on the trailer. The top photo shows my two helpers.
More about the trailer
The picture to the left shows the completed trailer waiting for the boat. This particular trailer, a Ventura 1300, seems to be very well suited for an I550 because the back cross-brace lines up very nicely with frame 169 and there is another cross-brace right under where the keel will be let down. I still need to attach a keel bulb platform to this cross-brace, but that will happen after I lift the boat in order to install the keel foil.
I put the final coat of paint on the bottom of the boat. Of course when you see the bottom all glossy you see every imperfection. However, at some point you have to say; "good enough." I have a small bit of work to do inside the boat while its upside down, but I'm planning on flipping it back over in a couple of days. By then, the trailer should be ready to take the boat.
Next up, the deck still needs to be faired, sanded, and painted. I did a preliminary fairing before we flipped the boat over, but there is a lot of work to be done in the next couple of weeks.
In between coats of paint I molded bunks for the trailer at frames 89 and 169. To do this i laminated 4" wide strips of 1/4 hydrotek plywood on the bottom of the boat at those frame locations.
I bought trailer a while ago for the project. I took off the powerboat bunks so that I could fit the ones that I built on the boat. The rear bunk bolts nicely onto the back frame on the trailer. However, the front bunk needed brackets to hold it in place. So anyway, I dusted off my welding skills and and created my own brackets. For the metal I took the supports for the old powerboat bunk and cut them in half and then welded them in place. I'll write more on this whole procedure when I have time in the future.
