General Discussions

More thoughts as I read the thread again:

I looked at a Canadian Sailcraft 36 late last year whose sides were white but the transom was navy. No reason you have to match exact in my mind.

The former Awlgrip employee who advised me (the novice) also strongly advocated for a two part epoxy paint as opposed to a one part urethane, even though the one part paint would be easier in terms of self leveling.

I have considered buffing it but there are several areas that are thin and a few areas that have small spider cracks that should be addressed. I guess I will see if the manufacturer of the paint will send me some color samples for comparison and think as needed. I was hoping someone has been in this dilemma before and reduce my legwork. Oh well.

Have you considered polishing the old paint? A former Awlgrip employee suggested this for my stern. He suggested progressive wet sand with 800, 1200, 2000 then 4000 grit. These discs/pads were found at a woodworking store,Festool brand. He said it’s hard to get it just right with roll/tip painting but much easier to polish what’s there.

There is a very nice blue hulled 39' Nauticat near me. Rather than repaint the stern to match, the owner had it wrapped in red vinyl. The resulting color combination looks good on the boat.

Since you are hand painting the stern, then I agree, getting advice from others that have done this is a really good idea.

The boat I had for 32 years faced the North, with the sun on the stern all year long for most of those years in Seattle - I think this contributed to a lot of weather damage - including crazing, so in an attempt to avoid this, the Tartan is in a South facing slip to avoid the sun on the stern.

best regards!

Thanks Chris,

I do understand the intricacies of paint and color matching and well aware of of the difficulties in color matching. My transom is needing some paint while on the hard and I intend to paint the complete panel. I’m just looking on what those before me have had success with to reduce the curve for myself. The yard won’t let me spray so I will have to try my hand at brushed paint.

Since the boat is some decades old, matching the original paint color is unlikely to work. Even a year of sun and weather can change the color so the boat is no longer the original color.

I was doing some work in the Diamond Paint shop of Delta Marine a couple of years ago. They had a paint rep. trying to match the paint color on a nearly new boat. Eventually they got the insurance company to agree to repaint both sides of the boat – not just do a patch, or even paint one side of the boat.

I was building a fiberglass dodger at the time. I took a cockpit seat locker to Diamond, and they did some paint color matching for the dodger. We agreed on a color that seemed be a pretty good match to the seat locker. Now people walk down the dock and wonder if the dodger was original to the boat, because the color match is pretty good.

On my old boat there was a hull patch that the boat yard would try to color match, but it would only last for 6 months or so before the paint and the nearby gel coat would look different.  Because of the location near the bow, I came up with my own solution. I put a big vinyl graphic over it, then matched it with the same graphic on the other side. Now 2 boat owners after me, the latest owner has removed the graphics, and of course the fiberglass under the graphic has been protected from the weather and is a darker / richer color than the rest of the hull. Same issue happens when you change the name of a boat, and remove the old letters – you can see the shadow of the old letters forever afterward. When I had to put a new hailing port on the back of the Tartan, I got the vinyl company to make a big vinyl rectangle to completely cover the original hailing port, and then put the hailing port on the rectangle. You can tell the background color on the decal does not match the hull color, but it is tidy, and centered on the stern. This was a lot less work than repainting the stern .

By the way, if a significant portion of the hull needs painting, I understand vinyl wraps are much less expensive than repainting the entire boat.

Best wishes,

Chris McMuldroch

Tartan 3800

Seattle

I need to do some paint work on the hull of my 372. Does anyone have the proper color reference and manufacture of a high quality paint? Hull color is white or nearly white. Any suggestions on color and type would be appreciated!