Day 335

Today was a real push to get the blasting completed and apply a primary coat to protect the "white" metal below the water line. As it turned out, the usual stormy late afternoon weather never arrived so we coated the whole hull. (Within a couple of inches of the white coat) It was amazing how far a couple of cans of ceram-kote, thinned with 4 oz. of acetone, went!
Finishing the blasting	My job was once again sifting sand, which becomes hard on the body after a while. Sand is pretty abrasive and masks must be worn because of the dust. Because it was so hot, I wore shorts to keep cool as I lugged sand back and forth. The skin on my legs ended up rubbed raw and probably a few top layers of skin came off. Not a great way to exfoliate girls! Even though we were still aching from yesterday, we pressed on. As I mentioned the other day, this type of weather doesn't happen very often this time of year ( especially on weekends it seems! ) here so we really wanted to get things wrapped up.
The length-wise welds on the bottom still need to be smoothed down some. Many builders take the below water line welds right off, but we prefer to leave some on to keep some extra strength to the thing. Anything above the water line must be smooth.
We almost forgot about the rudder which still had a hard layer of mill scale on it.
The keel is done, lets do the hull!
Painting the hull gave us both a sigh of relief. The original plan was to leave the sides and just do the bottom, but that would have meant more sandblasting next weekend. This way the hull is protected. It's too bad we didn't have time to do the masking where the colors join. ( No, we're not leaving it like this ha ha! ) The colors are pretty unique hey? The truck in the fore ground makes the boat look small. Strange that!	Gena checks her handy work

Day 335:
11 hours - finished sandblasting, painted on first coat of ceram kote 99 ( marine )