After getting the boat out of the water, we started sanding the bottom of the boat. The boat had some sort of ablative anti-fouling paint on it, and then what looks to be Interlux 2000 under that. We knew the boat had blisters, but I didn't fully appreciate how many. Once we started getting into the job, more and more of these little blisters started appearing. here are a couple of before and after pictures.
After slaving away with some 40 grit sandpaper on both orbital and belt sanders, Peter suggested that we try his pressure washer. I was quite skeptical that it would do anything to the epoxy paint, but thought it might help with getting the rest of the ablative anti-fouling paint off. So we lugged it up there, and gave it a shot.
I was very surprised to see the pressure washer strip off not only the interlux 2000 epoxy paint, but also start to blow off the gel-coat where the blisters were. It didn't seem to affect the gel-coat in areas that were blister free, but in those areas were we had blisters, it just got up under the gel-coat and took it right off. I was really amazed. Peter tells me the secret is in the nozzle, and he is using a version of this roto-blaster type nozzle, and it is incredible. Needless to say, it is a TON easier than trying to sand all of this stuff off. The only dilemma a this point is, should we take off all of the gel-coat, and the start from there. Not sure I want to try messing with spraying new gel-coat, but I have gotten suggestions to replace it with rolled on epoxy.
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