peeling bottom paint

[crieders]

Upon a close inspection this weekend I have paint peeling down to the gel coat. Each year its repainted with Micron and it does not take to the old gel coat. Is there a reason for that and whats the solution?

[Tom Soko]

Cliff,
Most likely the original "prep" done by the commissioning dealership when the boat was new was not as good as it could have been.  When boats are shipped from the factory, they have no bottom paint, just gelcoat and mold release wax.  Most dealers/boatyards don't put their highest paid workers on the bottom prep jobs, so you probably had a "less than rocket scientist" worker doing it.  If lots of solvent and lots of clean rags are not used, the mold release wax gets smeared around instead of taken off.  I had the same problem on my '87, but I attribute most of my flaking to layers and layers of bottom paint.  If you are using ablative paint, you hopefully don't have a huge buildup of paint.  You can either take the entire bottom down to gelcoat and then put on a few coats of epoxy as a barrier coat, or you can try chipping away any loose paint, sand smooth (feather the edges), and clean the bare area with lots of acetone and clean rags.  The paint should then stick better.  Hope this helps.

[crieders]

It does help.I will try the acetone trick. Thanks

[Craig Illman]

Cliff - For my new rudder, I did the full Interlux InterProtect barrier coat treatment. The Micron Extra had to go on about eight hours after the final coat of the barrier paint. Check out this PDF from Interlux:

http://www.yachtpaint.com/USA/boat_painting_guide/pdf/antifouling/fiberglass.pdf

Good luck!

Craig