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The contents of the paint locker revealed one unopened tin of deck paint, and one opened tin which was less than half full. Probably not quite enough for the whole job though it would be a close call. Looking over the shelves of the Espar chandlery at Harleyford, Blue/Grey was the only colour they didn’t have in stock! Then came the bad news. Blue/Grey had been discontinued. There was not one can of Blue/Grey deck paint in any chandlery on the River Thames, nor at any major mail order chandlery Nationwide.
In desperation I phoned International. I was told that Blue/Grey had been a special colour sold only in the UK, and that a rationalisation of paint colours across Europe had eliminated it about two years ago. They sent me a colour sample for their Blue, which turned out to be nowhere near close enough. So we decided to try to make our one and a half tins do the job. We would start with the side decks and the bow deck. The aft deck would be done later if supplies held out.
The decks were scrubbed with a strong solution of Starbright Boat Wash. When everything was dry, local areas were given an extra going over with Formula 1 degreaser. When everything was dry we masking up.
We used flexible masking tape for the seriously curved bits, and blue 30-day low tack tape for the rest. After the masking tape was applied, newspaper was used to cover areas of paintwork that might be susceptible to splashing from the roller – mainly the bow gunwales and the anchor windlass. To make it easy to peel the masking tape off later, the tape ends were folded over to make tabs. It helps to avoid getting paint under the fingernails!
The entire area to be painted was masked off before any painting started. The sequence of painting was quite important so that access could be maintained to remove the masking tape before the paint dried and without recourse to sky-hooks. We started at the aft end of the starboard side deck and worked round the decks in sequence.
Paint was applied using a small roller; in areas too small for the roller, paint was applied by brush, stippled to a rough finish.
After each section was done we removed the tape before painting the next section. It is essential to keep ones hands spotlessly clean during this process as otherwise you leave paint smears and fingerprints all over the place. Gymnastics experience and Yoga practice are useful for reaching deck extremities during the tape removal phase.
With only the rear deck to do, there was less than half a tin of paint left. However the rear deck is around 6 square meters and so we weren't sure that there would be enough. To boost the chance of success we thinned the paint 10% with white spirit. As it turned out, by applying the paint sparingly we had more than enough to spare.
We are well pleased by the result.
We have since discovered that the Starbrite non skid/anti slip deck cleaner does a pretty good job of cleaning the decks so we are hoping not to have to repeat this process in the foreseeable future.
the bow becks all masked up and ready for painting
Starboard side deck
Note the "quick release" folded over tabs in the masking tape ends
The finished article - the spots are rain