Bottom paint peel and wet rudder on the hard

[crieders]

The bottom paint on my 1990 boat peels down to the white "base". Paint does not adhere and when the boat is pulled in the fall, those white areas where the layers of  point has peeled off are evident. Am I due to take all the paint off and treat the bottom somehow?
Secondly and perhaps worse, the rudder has a small rust spot which is also wet. I am afraid water is getting into the rudder and wonder what the proper fix is? Thanks

[Ron Hill]

Cliff : You'll need to take all of the paint off the bottom, and prepare the surface for repainting.  Depending on the thickness of your epoxy barrier coat?, you might even want to redo(add) another layer of epoxy.

You are the owner of a"Weeping" rudder which needs to be drained and dry-ed out.  After that, it needs to be resealed.

Both of these problems and fixes have been addressed numerous times in the Mainsheet tech notes and here on the message board. 

[pablosgirl]

Hi Cliff,

Your peeling bottom paint is the result of poor surface preparation by the yard that did the initial paint.  The yard failed to remove all the mold release wax from the hull's gelcoat prior to painting the boat.  The white base coat is the gelcoat   But Ron is right,  you will need to remove all the paint from the bottom.  For proper preparation, the yard will need to sand the bottom paint off and then do several chemical wipe downs of the hull to remove the offending wax.  If this is not done completely, you will continue to have paint adhesion problems.

As for your rudder try http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,3104.0.html this thread. Or do a search on "weeping" as Ron suggested.

Paul

[Ed Shankle]

There has got to be more background information; I don't think mold release would manifest as an issue 21 years later. Maybe a bottom stripping this year not done properly or an uncompatible paint? Or both?

[TonyP]

We are having a soda blast by Salstrip to totally strip the bottom at our yard in 2 weeks then 2 coats of epoxy then 2 coats of antifoul with a 3rd to leading edges and waterline. This is an expensive process but environmentally friendly. It has over 10 years of paint on the hull. We are doing this as there are signs of cracking in places around the waterline, but more as an insurance.
We plan to replace our speed and depth through hulls as well
Good luck with yours Cliff

Tony

[David Sanner]

I've been dealing with flaking paint on every haul.

Apparently what can happen is over the years the paint
gets so thick it puts too much stress on the initial layer and
cracks and peels.  The better the original prep jobs more
stress is can handle but if the paint builds up too thick it's
bound to happen.  Making sure it doesn't build up in
the first place (full/proper sanding) seems wise.

A local high end boat yard suggest saving my money
and just pealing the chips that come off easy and paying
for an extra bit of sanding at each haul and feathering
the transitions.  It's worked so far and but it's not as pretty.
Good thing it's on the bottom of the boat ;)

Every time I'm up close scraping the newly loosened patches (only
takes a couple hours each haul) I think about doing the full peel
but once the paint goes on and I don't look too closely it all
seems fine and certainly sails just as well.

But if you've got a good price for it... and want to get it
out of the way getting a full peel seems like a nice job
to have done.   

Your boat... your wallet ... ;)

[TonyP]

Well we just had our bottom soda blasted and found many blisters on our so called later manufactured "protected bottom".
Just a warning to keep an eye on your bottom when you haul out. What I thought were 5 or 6 blisters turned into 50 or 60 as well as the rudder needing a total re-glass.(shame I didn't have time to make the elliptical extension)
After repairs two coats of epoxy and two antifoul
We had work professionally done but handy people could do the work themselves.
We also now sporting all new electrics including a new raymarine X5 wheel pilot and Plastimo Olympic 135 compass.(ritchie sp5 too expensive here.

cheers
Tony

[TonyP]

another pic

[TonyP]

and another

[TonyP]

the finished job

[crieders]

Wow terrrific !! I don't think my 1990 hull has blisters but plenty of white spots where the paint is off. I'd love to check out the soda blasting idea.

[Les Luzar]

Half the fun of owning a boat is simply looking at it! That is a beautiful bottom job!