Waterbug

Here's some pictures we took in Aug 2005 right after a storm came through near the end of a series race. We didn't get the knockdowns but there's some nice rainbow pictures

This page shows the WaterBug bottom job work. Lots of these links may be broken since I got tired of uploading them. For the whole set see my roadrunner page I took most of these bottom job pictures at various times between 24 April and late August 2001. Back in April of 2001 I had already sanded off the ablative bottom paint plus the epoxy coat from hell. The boat had been overdue for a bottom job for some time but the last couple years have been hellishly hot in Texas and blisters came popping out by the hundreds last summer. Grinding the bottom paint down exposed an epoxy barrier coat that looked like swiss cheese. It all had to come off and it wasn't fun. I had best luck stripping the ablative and epoxy by taking the top layers off with Interlux stripper then sandingthe remaining epoxy off with a DA air sander. But I wouldn't do it that way again. I'd either use a heavy duty electric grinder with about a 45grit or have the gellcoat all stripped professionally.

As I stripped behind the keel I found a crack where water had apparently been seeping under the gellcoat. This undoubtedly contributed greatly to the blistering. I tried a simple epoxy patch by grinding out the crack and filling it with epoxy, but the first time I put the boat in thelift and unloaded the keel off the trailer it cracked again. I didn't take any pictures of the crack, but you can see where I ended up sanding downand re-fiberglassing to repair it in the pictures below. There are about 6-8 layers of thin fiberglass mat on there in this picture. I ended up with about 12 layers in all. That fixed that problem.

The picture below with Mike and Scott was taken after that repair was done and the barrier coat had been applied. I ended up using West Systems epoxy and barrier coat powder. The main reason I used West System was the extensive documentation available through their publications. (See the West System Web site for info)

But just as I was getting ready to put the boat back on the trailer that weekend I found more trouble. A blistered ridge appeared in the gellcoat all along the starboard side of the keel. I was very worried that this was indicating structural problems, but grinding the area out the next weekend revealed what was apparently a manufacturing defect. There was one or two thin layers of matt under the gellcoat then a gap between the rest of the lay-up. When I lifted the boat with the keel ring (previously I'd lifted with straps) it apparently flexed the bottom enough to make that gap blister up. Another few weekends of grinding ,fiberglassing and fairing ensued to fix that.

A week or so later, second week of September I finished the painting. After a day of drying in the lift she was finally back in the water.

In March of 2002 I took a *quick* swim one sunny day and was quite dismayed to find a spot where the Trinidad SC was flaking off the barrier coat. Way bad! A later swim in a wetsuit revealed extensive flaking. I called West Systems, but they had no similar reports, and suggested I had made some error in surface prep. Bottom line is the boat will need to come back out of the water for another round of paint stripping and bottom paint. I'm putting that off to do some sailing. I'll update the site with some pictures when I pull it out. If anyone else has any experience with Trinidad SC over West Systems epoxy I'd be interested in hearing from you.

UPDATE: Now it's November 2002 and the boat's back out on the trailer. I spent last weekend pulling it and power washing the Trinidad SC off. I forgot to bring out my camera so no pictures. Just imagine red paint peeling off a very old barn and you pretty much have it. It seems to have adhered well above the waterline, but everything below the waterline washed off quite easily. A half day job with a tiny 1300 PSI power washer and a 3M scrub pad. I've been trying to get ahold of someone at Kop-Kote - the Petit Trinidad SC manufacturer to see if they can come up with a good theory on what went wrong. I'm still not buying the surface prep explanation as I'd extensively washed and sanded the epoxy before applying the paint. But maybe it needed to dry more than the aproximate 20 hours between application and launchgin? Seems unlikely since it was about 95 degrees and dry during that 20 hours. More to come...