So it's me again. I dont mean to hog up all the bandwidth on the Forum haha. Any how boat has been pulled out as of yesterday so I'm Switching gears. I'm going to focus now on the bottom and the through hulls. Which leads me to the question I was thinking about getting it soda blasted and barrier coating the bottom. from what I read boats that are made with vinyl Ester resin don't need barrier coat? Are the Downeaster made with vinyl Ester resin. I haven't really gotten into the condition of the bottom being as I work all day in the boat is in the dark but at a quick glance it looks I do see some spots that look like some of the gel coat is failing, brittle and or oxidized, and falling off. I guess that's how to describe it. I don't see any blisters but I do see inconsistencies in the gel coat upon preliminary inspections. The boats been sitting in the water for 3 years. Does anybody have any experiences with barrier coating the bottoms of their boats what product works best and how much of it will I need.
So just gave the hull a good look over . Not much bottom paint left but I'm pretty impressed with the hull shape/design etc. And it looks damn near perfect. Have allot of owners gotten blisters etc? I'm kind of on the fence about barrier coating. I know it deff won't hurt. Hit or miss with bottom problems? It's a brackish water boat in the north east USA . My plans are to do some ocean crossings and serious cruising mostly in tropics where blisters etc are more likely to develop?
@mgav451
Have a DE38 built in 1975. Its been in the tropics most of its life and has developed blisters under the gel coat about the size of a half dollar even though the hull has been coated with Interlux barrier coat. The number of blisters is about 15 per side. I would be very careful about removing the old paint in order to get to the gel coat. The gel coat is an important barrier to water intrusion. I personally fell the blister problem is overblown in order to generate work for boat yards, but I'm sure there are some exceptions.
To save a lot of grinding, I have used this method to deal with the problem. I first drill 2 holes at the top and bottom edge of the blister. You can feel the drill go into the space of the blister. Then I take a hose and flush out the space with water forced into the space. I do this as often as you can while the boat is out of the water. After the clean blister is dry, I inject epoxy resin into the space using a syringe without the needle. You inject the resin into the bottom of the blister until it comes out at the top of the blister, and then use packing tape to seal the holes. Once cured, remove tape and paint. Easy, pesey. You can drill 4 holes into blister and have two applications of clear tape for better flushing.
Cheers and beers,
Jim
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