Tony,
Very nice to see that you are making such great progress. I really admire your courage and craftsmanship. Look luck with the final push!
I painted a small skiff in my backyard last July. It was my first time painting a boat. It was well over 100 degrees everyday which presented a few obstacles to say the least. Here are few hard learned lessons. FYI I used Prefection which in the end gave very good results.
I am sure most of this has been said before….
1) Paint in the early AM. I did all my prep the day before and then in the AM would just solvent wash and tack off before putting down a coat. I would let this dry thru the heat of the day and then sand it out and clean it up in the evening.
2) Work in small sections and try, at all costs, to maintain a wet edge. This was the hardest thing to figure out bc the paint was drying so fast. You need to tip the edge of the previous section as you tip the one you just did to blend them so if you wait too long it will be too dry and will smear.
3) Over thin the paint. I used 1.5 times the recommended amount.
4) You can use the cheap foam rollers that are available at HD. No need to buy expensive ones and in fact I found the cheapos worked better! Also I used a foam brush to tip which was far superior to a conventional brush. The latter left huge ridges in the paint bc it dried before it could flow out. The foam ones minimized this big time!
5) I sanded between coats to try and remove ridges and runs. The first two coats I pretty much sanded off completely bc I was still learning. I think I put on 5 coats before I felt it looked good. Mine you it was a dark colour which shows every flaw!
6) If you get behind with tipping and you find the paint is drying too fast don’t try and rework it just keep going. You can solve the problems with the next coat or rather with the next sanding!
7) Avoid rain...rain is bad....very bad....did I mention that rain is bad......good luck!