Days 243-245, Top side paint DONE! (you need to see) , bottom paint 2-nd ant 3-rd coats, work on rudder

 Hull

Topside painting

First 2 layers of paint was done last Saturday and Sunday  and pained hull looked absolutely cool.

It was heart breaking moment when i get know that all hard work (and money) was put on topsides get to nothing but very poor result.

I know that Alexseal Topcoat 501 paint is humidity sensitive e.t.c but after good experience with  Interlux Perfection which is also humidity sensitive I decided that IF i give paint full 12 hours at 25C with about 70% RH it will be dry enough to withstand morning dew and fog.

NO! It did not.  Morning dew last Monday appeared Sunday evening dew and all night fog covered boatyard. It did not give paint to dry enough to withstand environment. About 30% of whole surface get damaged (instead of high gloss surface it get dull and matt). 

 This weekend I changed strategy, first to apply paint as early as possible we sanded and washed previous coat day before painting and  on Saturday morning as soon as morning dew dried we wiped surface out  with IPA alcohol and tack rug and start painting. 

 

Happy faces after 3-rd coat.

 

We finished painting at about 11AM. (previous coats we did at about 2-3PM) so we win 4 hours. But even with additional 4 hours on light day it was definitely not enough to get paint to dry well.

Paint datasheet says - without accelerator paint gets "tape dry" stage in 24 hours at 25C and in 30 hour at 20C and full cure in 14-18 days.

 After two fails I trust this numbers, however datasheet does not say anything about when pain gets resistant (tolerant) to get wet or high humidity. Based in that waiting 14 days in controlled environment is not practical I decided to try to prevent condensation at least for  "tape dry period".

Ok. keep in mind I am in Houston area in winter in open boatyard. How i can make controlled environment  here?   

Weather is about 15-25C RH~85% in day and 10-15C and RH100% at night, almost each night we have  heavy fog in the morning and dump wet dew overnight.

I decided to build tent and use big  kerosene heater-blower (75000BTU) to heat air inside. 

Simple to say build tent for 34' boat ;-) it  appears size of small hangar - like 40x25' and 16' height to keep boat inside provide at least 3 sides + roof protection. Also it has to be easy and fast (<2 hours) to be built, light enough, easy to source, dirty cheap (it is one time use), steady enough to withstand 10kn wind (foretasted to the night), be able to build it over freshly painted boat without touching it sides. And on the end it has to be easy installed and removed by 2 person.

I did it. 

Shopping list: 

• 10' 1" PVC electrical conduits x28 to make 7 arches (4x10' per arch x7)   [returnable]
• 1/2" PVC electrical conduits x16 to make rib connection among long side. (4x10" X4) [returnable]
• 4 steel spikes to anchor tent to ground [returnable]
• 4 tarps - 29x39'  - Sides  [returnable]
• 1 tarp - 20x18' - Aft wall [returnable]
• 1 tarp 10x8'  - skirt on front side to trap hot air inside. [returnable]
• Pack of zip-ties to tie pipes and tarps to pipes.
• Roll of  masking tape to prevent connections to slide.
• couple rolls of cloth rope. 

 Most parts may be "rented" from store for and then returned, due to no were and tear on them. ;) 

 Plus 

• I pure-rented 75000 btu kerosine heater from HomeDepot rental center for $27 for a day.
• And burned 15 gallons of kerosine overnight. $35 for 5 gallon can x3  

 

Whole process of building took little over 2 hours.

 Tent build in progress (from security cam)

Assembly is not started yet, just checking lengths and the idea

First arches installed

Frame is built.

Beginning of walls installation

Aft wall set in progress

Tent is finished

Several high resolution pictures

In process of building Vic (my son) fixing tarp to the mast.

Tent of size of small hose build complete.

Only last 2 arches pinned to the ground, middle arches ends just zip-tied to tarp and tarp keeps them on place  in longitudinal direction. To keep tent not fly away i intentionally took tarps oversized in vertical dimension to make "ears"  and weight them with heavy  wood blocks (thanks boatyard has them everywhere) and my tool boxes.

 

 About 10pm when outside temperature dropped to 15C and wind raced to about 10 knots i realized that heater is not enough powerful to keep 20C with only 3 sides closed. so, i went to store and sourced one more tarp.

I did not put heater inside the tent but "shoot" air from outside. and keep "mouth open".

It was done this way for several  reasons:

Fire protection, even heater gets in fire, fire will not catch tent and boat imminently. 

Heater exhaust air temperature is  really high, no sense to check may boat withstand it or not

Last and most important functionally, Heater is burning hydrocarbon fuel and it will bring humidity up in closed environment. (burning kerosene produce Carbon dioxide and water)  I  decided to mix heater output with external (cold) air which has less water in it to keep humidity under control.

 In the most cold time 4:22AM outside was about 14C  and condensation everywhere, but in tenet i was able to keep it almost 20C and RH60% 

Morning light came with good news - paint survived the first night without damage !

 

Next night was foggy and a lot of condensation, but paint already dried and no damage happened next night. SUCCESS CONFIRMED.

Bottom paint 

In meantime we did paint bottom 2-nd and 3-rd layer.  really nothing to picture.

Only want to say that Irwin34 requires about a gallon of Totalboat spartan paint per coat  if applied with 3/16" roller. Lesson learned.

Rudder 

Working  on rudder. 

Stock is cleaned up and polished.

Rudder skin opened and foam checked for water. NO water or moist found. Metal inside is intact.

fiberglass had some small cracks around stock, about 1/4" around and 1/4" deep area was drimmeled out and infilled with mix of West system epoxy with 403 and 404 fillers to provide seal and good adhesion to rudder stock.