The interior painting continues. Completing the main salon painting is a significant step towards completion. Fixing the leaks in the portlights, repairing the water damaged shelving and painting opens up a lot of storage allowing me to get everything organized and ready to start the systems repairs and upgrades.
Rebedding Port Lights
To make the storage areas waterproof I rebedded the four portlights and removed the one port light in the gally. While it made the cleaning up the portlights easily the lack of proper sealant raised hell with the interior woodwork. The portlights have now been rebedded with a solid layer of butyl tape and are leak free.
Shelving Repair
On the port side, there was extensive damage to the top shelf directly under the portlights. At first glance, it looked to be just a 2″ x 2″ area that was rotted, but in tearing that out to get to good wood, I found a lot more damage. It seems that the previous owner had just covered the rot with a thin plywood veneer, not addressing the leaking portlight issue at all.
The first step was to remove this veneer and all the rotten wood underneath. A wood chisel and rotary sander made quick work of this.
Using the leftover shelf as a mold, I placed a couple of layers of epoxy and fiberglass down to make a waterproof tray out of the shelf. Even though the portlight is now leak-proof, sometimes you forget to close them, so this tray will catch any water coming through an accidentally left open window making for easy cleanup.
On the starboard side, there is just some minor wood damage. Removing all the vinyl liner and fairing the hull and bulkheads prepared everything for paint. The bookshelves are modular and removable, so I took those out to clean and paint the area. After replacing the modular bookcase, I used fairing compound to seal the edges of the top shelf of the cabinet to the hull. I fill the one rotted area with the fairing compound as well. A covering layer of epoxy to waterproof the rest of the wood finished up this area. This made the top shelf a catch tray for any water that might come in through an accidentally left open port, protecting the books and stuff in the bookcase.
Main Salon Painting
As is standard procedure on Pomaika’i I used two coats of Interlux Pre-Kote for all areas. For the exposed regions I then applied two coats of Interlux Brightsides. For the lockers, I used Interlux BilgeKote.
I “roll and tip” the gloss coats on all the areas I paint on Pomaika’i except the lockers. The lockers are usually odd shaped and hard to reach, and I don’t really care if there’s some orange peeling as they’re mostly not visible. Roll and Tip is when you roll on the paint with a sponge roller. Then you quickly follow that up by lightly running the tip of a paintbrush over the area. This smooths any drips, knocks down any air bubbles and keeps the paint from “orange peeling.” Orange peeling is when the surface of the paint dries with a texture that looks somewhat like the peel on an orange, for some reason running a brush over it before it dries keeps this from forming.
These glossy surfaces allow for easy cleaning and limit mold build up.
What’s Left?
Now that the main salon painting is done I have only five areas left to paint; all will require significant changes in layout so will be done down the line.
- Galley – I want to add cabinets to enclose the top shelf. Also, I will be removing the current fixed stove top with a gimballed Force 10 stove/oven.
- Nav Station – I haven’t finalized plans on what exactly to do with this area. A lot will depend on if I install a full electronics package (big $$) or just essential items. I’ll need to build a cabinet above the table area depending on what electronics to bring aboard.
- Hallway – The whiteboard that was installed covered a large cutout area. I’ll need to rebuild this area but exactly how I’ll do it will depend upon the distribution panel I use when I restore the electrical system next month.
- Aft Head – I’ll be turning this area into a wet room for storage of fenders, wet weather gear, and scuba gear. I’ll be removing the sink cabinet to place a scuba tank rack.
- Minor Lockers – There are a few lockers (including the anchor locker) that need to be cleaned and painted.
Since these areas will require a lot of wood work, I’ll push the projects off and start focusing on the system upgrades/repairs in October. The rest of the boat projects are going to start moving away from being labor-intense to budget-intense.
