Day 133, 3/1-3/2 Deck painting preparation (about 8 hours total in 2 days)

Deck

Paint preparation.

Sounds simple. Sound - yes, amount of work is enormous.

Plan

My plan for every part on the deck I need to go and do. Only 20 small steps for each sq. inch of surface.

1) Look carefully every square inch of the cabin top, deck, hatches and other surfaces in top part of the boat and identify all surface issues like cracks, gelcoat voids, stripped screw holes, intentionally drilled holes patched with sealer (found several) and mark and note all of them.

2) Grind all not good areas.

Grind open all gelcoat imperfections (voids, chopped peaces , stress cracks e.t.c) up to live fiberglass.
Grind out all de-laminated areas around cracks.
Grind slope around all unnesesary holes and stripped screw holes.
Grind putty over deck/hull screws on transom, due to gel coat cracks over "plugs"

3) Cover over

All Deep voids >3mm deep with fiberglass cloth (1708 my lovely)
Glass over screws on the transom to prevent cracking again
Fill stripped screw holes smaller 5mm with epoxy stuffed with 404 filler
Glass over all holes bigger than 5mm
Build up laminate back around and over cracks in fiberglass

4) Grind out sticking glass fibers and over laminated areas.

5) Do "draft" patching with TotalBoat TotalFair putty.

6) Sand to smooth and identify ares need more fairing

7) Fair areas not good enough or just passed in first round

8) Sand to smooth and identify ares need more fairing, and repeat steps 7 and 8 until satisfied.

9 ) Sand all surface to make surface for new paint to grip.

10) cleanup all with de-greaser.

11) Masking tape all on-deck stuff does not need to be painted

12) Paint all with primer - (first layer)

13) sand and Paint all with primer - (second layer)

14) Sand - and clean everything to dust free level.

15) paint layer one for all glossy areas.

15) paint layer two for all glossy areas.

16) Sand and prepare all no-skid areas for painting.

17) Masking tape around all no-skid areas.

18) Paint first layer and sprinkle no skid dust.

19) Paint no-skid areas with second layer.

20) Call friends and drink beer on fresh deck.

WORK started

Prep work I split on areas, and first area is cockpit.

From first view I feel it will be 5-10 small places to take care. On the end (just in cockpit) it is about 20 small places, 10-15 deep areas 3-10mm deep, 3 places to rebuild deck laminate due to deem cracks, and about 10 holes made in top Fiberglas and not glassed by PO.

I followed grinding before.

Here pictures after first over-glassing. (STEP 3)