Larva

We moved aboard Fattycakes in the spring of 2010. It was a fairly easy move. We moved the powerboat into the slip next to the sailboat and chucked our shit from one boat to the other. It's easier moving from boat to boat than it is downsizing from house to boat. We didn't have furniture to sell or anything.

We settled onto Fattycakes and almost immediately started working on her outward appearance. We didn't have thousands of dollars to spend so we'd have to learn how to do things ourselves. We wanted to paint the decks and the hull, apply some sort of non-skid on the decks so we didn't slip and kill ourselves, install new windows and update the rigging. When we were living in our house we employed a gardener and called my step-dad anytime something broke. We were not do-it-yourselfers. But a professional paint job would've cost over $15,000, which was only slightly less than what we paid for the entire boat itself. We had to either figure out a way to do it ourselves or live with the chalky yellow.

98% of people who paint their own boats haul them out of the water and paint them in a boat yard. This means haul out fees, yard fees, and hotel fees because we wouldn't be able live on a hauled-out boat with a four-year-old. It would take days to actually paint the boat, plus weeks waiting for the paint to cure.

I started researching paint and painting techniques and how the hell we were going to get it done. In the meantime, we contacted a plastic company and had them fabricate four new windows. I researched boat window installation and found a technique that looked promising. I ordered all of the supplies and when our windows came in we set to work installing them. The old windows were screwed in and bedded down in thick adhesive and peeling them out was the most satisfying thing ever. Like ripping off an acrylic fingernail. The new windows made a dramatic improvement.

New window on the left. Old window on the right. Cute baby in the middle.

I also tried to tackle a few other small things, things that would make an immediate improvement but not require too much time or expertise. I painted the icky companionway hatch.

Before

After

I began researching fiberglass repair. Our boat had dozens of small nicks and quite a few missing chunks of fiberglass that would need to be ground out, filled with epoxy and sanded before we could even think about paint.

This was a small void that proved itself to be a much bigger problem once I started picking at it. I ground it out, layered in fiberglass cloth, filled it in with epoxy, and sanded it smooth and fair.

Before. 

After.
To this day I'm still blown away by my mad fiberglass/epoxy skills.

It took forever to fill the random dings and nicks, to make everything smooth in order to prepare for eventual paint. Boat paint is especially thin and even the teeniest hairline cracks will eventually show through the surface. Meticulous is the name of the game when it comes to boat paint prep.

But we still didn't know how we were going to go about painting. It seemed like such a huge overwhelming task. It seemed so expensive. I hated the thought of having to haul the boat out to paint it. There had to be a solution.

And then one day I saw a guy hanging his ass out of a dinghy, paintbrush in hand, very carefully painting the hull of a sailboat.

Aha! I'll paint it from the dinghy in the water! It was such a brilliant idea. Except that everybody thought it was nuts. But that's okay. I'm down with being nuts.