Commander #155 'Mephisto Cat'

[Rico]

And speaking of Gel-Coating, here is a bit about the much delayed documentation about the gel-coating work on the boat itself:

I've many pictures and trying to pick a few is hard, but here goes...

We started by taking EVERYTHING off. Everything.

C-155 was sitting naked whithout a stitch of hardware (Picture #3). My Friend Guillermo did the bulk of the fine work of the fairing necessary for the gel-coat finish to look smooth and he was also the master of the Gel-coat spraying.

I was fortunate to have his spraying skills available as evidenced by the mess I made when I tried it myself... From early-on, my spraying was limited only to spraying the Gel-coat curing film (Part-all).

After the repair and structural upgrades came the sanding. Lots of sanding. Some poking, reparing, and structural upgrades also happened at this stage, especifically at the hull / deck joint, at the stern chainplate, and at a few dings & scratches that had been collected the boat's lifetime. We also eliminated MANY screw holes of all kinds. A bunch at the companionway bulkhead and house as I deleted all bolt-thru connections. (Picture #1)

When that was all done, we sanded to a rough finish (good for a strong mechanical bond) and applied the first few coats of Gel-coat.

THESE few coats did not turn out so well, as billions of little fish-eyes stared at us from the hull...
- Utter Disaster.

These are tiny bubbles that formed within the original factory Gel-coat / resin and then show-up when the surface is abraded. They were really evident when a good coat was applied to the surface. (Super zoom Picture #2) This was not good... actually, it felt like defeat at the time.

Needless to say, we wanted no more of this, so we went deeper with the abrasives and then, using stiff plastic cards as a spatula, I went over the whole surface with a strong filler in order to avoid any more tiny surface irregularities... (While Guillermo smirked & drank beer, I might add...).

- Then we sanded ALL of THAT OFF, and that left only the tiny bits that were actually captured within the surface irregularities... Uggh! (Picture #4 shows the paste partially sanded off. (-That is about when the first sander died!) The pictures were taken at different stages - we eventually went below the waterline with the prep & the new gel-coat.


I will say that having someone - anyone - to provide a hand with a bit here & there, or even at least help drink a few beers while working makes the most daunting chore much easier. If they have some skill, then the advantage is exponential. Working by yourself is not nearly as much fun...

COLOR
I wanted a light color to avoid high temperatures in the california sun, but there were few stock colors available that seemed appealing to me.

I ended-up buying some dark gray and a bunch of white gel-coat and mixed my own colors. I ended-up with a light shade of gray for the hull and a much lighter shade of gray for the non-skid. The rest is a sort of creamy white - but not near anything like BEIGE...

More to follow shortly...