Work continues with more topsides painting. Here I’m spot-checking the masking.

Hand sanding between coats is an 8-hour project.

After three coats:

For the first three coats of topside paint, I began at the transom, then moved up the starboard side to the bow, then aft along the port side, back to the transom. For each coat, the least-perfect finish occurred on the port side, bow section. Initially I thought the issue was that I wasn’t thinning the paint enough, resulting in a too-thick mixture by the time I rounded the stem. While that may have been true for the first two coats, correction attempts on the third coat failed to fix the problem to the degree with which I had hoped. Another problem was something my tipper noticed while preparing for the third coat. Namely, the hull on the port side is warmer than the hull on the starboard side. Even though the topsides receive no direct sunlight, the port side faces the sun and the translucent plastic over the frame allows some heat though.

Prepping before the fourth coat:

For the fourth and final coat, I started in the morning, before the sun could heat the hull. As an additional precaution, I started rolling at the bow, moving down the port side, then back up the starboard side.

Masking removed:

Recall that I preserved the line that defines the bottom of the boot-stripe by marking-off 2 inches below that level every 6 inches. I began the process of making the boot stripe by making marks 2 inches above the lower lines. Next, I ran a flexible batten along those marks and made the pencil line that defines the bottom of the boot stripe.

After taping off the bottom side, I use me notes to mark off the top…

…then masked off the top.

The cove stripe starts 1 inch below the rub rail, and is about 3/4 inch wide. I 1-inch and 3/4-inch wide flexible battens, and a helper, to mark off the cove stripe.

A popular cove-stripe color is gold, but I went with off-white because (1) that’s what I had on hand, and (2) the high-tech two-part paints don’t come in the correct shade of gold. The stripes required just two coats for total coverage.

Next up, I’ll be raising the scaffolding so I can get to work on the decks. My goal in the next 2-3 weeks is to get the barrier coats and primer on the bottom, and also get back to varnishing the rails and house (just a few more coats each).