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A short while ago I took delivery of a pond yacht in need of a total repaint, the yacht had been hand painted below the water line and was certainly in need of some TLC. The first task having discussed the work to be carried out with its owner was to decide on the paint scheme which was to be White above the water line and Green below the water line and finished off with a Gold W/L strip. Also included in the remit was to replace the rudder with a new one and also replace the Skeg as well as adding a Bow protector.
The first job was to completely sand down the hull removing all of the old paints and varnishes etc, this job took about 4 days in total to achieve the clean hull required for the new paint job. Once this was complete the next task was to make the new rudder from brass sheet which in turn was brazed to the rudder post and put in position before making the new Skeg. With the rudder and skeg now finished a final check was carried out to ensure the rudder moved freely in position.
With the rudder now finished the next job was to carefully fill and rub down the entire hull until a smooth finish was achieved all over ready for priming, this was done using a Plastic filler primer which is then wet/dried between each coat until smooth. Once the primer had been left overnight the next task was to very carefully mark on the W/L using the measurements taken at the start from the original paint work. I decide to paint the Green first below the W/L which is applied in three coats using Wet/Dry between each coat leaving plenty of time between coats in order to achieve a high gloss finish, this was then left a good 48hrs before masking in order to apply the White above the W/L. This was applied using the same method as the Green in order to achieve the high gloss finish and again left for a good 48hrs to cure.
Now that the re-paint is finished the next job is to apply the Gold W/L using Vinyl lining from Beccs which is designed even to curve around awkward shapes eg around the stern without any problem. Once the W/L had been applied the final task was to make the Bow protector using very thin Copper sheet carefully beaten out over a former and then cut to fit the bow as required this as you can imagine took some time to achieve the end result. The hull refit and repaint were now complete so the last job was to apply a high quality gloss varnish to finish off and enhance the overall finish and then left to cure.
Overall this was an interesting restoration as well as challenging at times but the end result was well worth it.
