Commander 227

[Commander227]

My first inclination was to make the hull deck joint disappear like "Mephisto Cat" but as the Commander has a near vertical freeboard amid ship I was nervous about not having any protection for the new paint. I wanted something that would stand proud of the freeboard by at least 1/2".
I found this profile at Eagle Molding. It is made to accept the original stainless trim piece. It comes in 16' pieces so there is only one joint to miter in, and it went on very nicely. I filled the void with 4200.

[Commander227]

When I bought the Princess, the waterline was just 1" tape, was 4" too high, and not plumb with how I felt the boat should balance so I did not have any reference as to where to place it after the paint job. I poured over all the plans in the manual, looked at all the pictures I could in the Gallery and came up with a enough points to run the line. Then I worried and worried about it's placement. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I put the blubbers in the well to remove enough ice to float the Princess, guessed the weight of the mast and rigging and donned my hip boots armed with a china marker. I figured she was at her design attitude when water ran into the mid ship scuppers at an equal rate from the bow and the stern. Then I made as many marks as I could reach without having ice cold water run into my hip boots, pulled the boat back out, turned her around and marked the stern. After I got her back into the shop I used a borrowed laser level (the rotating beacon type), leveled out the boat by placing the laser's line 1" above my marks and followed the laser for the lower tape line. Then i raised the level 3.5" to shoot in the upper tape line. You can see in the photo how close we were to the line we came up with from the pictures and drawings. Bob came back over and started to repair the damage from our little mishap and shot the new line. After seeing the white barrier coat I changed my mind from VC-17 bottom paint and used white Vivid instead. So having a white waterline wouldn't work so I had him shoot it in red.(without getting spousal approval, she has not seen it yet)

[bill@ariel231]

mmmm... shiny!

I think you got a bargain on the chrome plate. I had a quote for $500 for just my nav lights (haven't done those yet).