How I Painted My Boat

I decided to write this to answer all of the questions that a new (used) boat owner would have. It took me forever to find down to earth boat forums and articles that helped me build enough confidence to paint my own boat. Multiple hours of internet surfing and dozens of articles later, I decided to tackle the project myself.

First a little history: Julie and I (my wife and partner in arms) bought our boat in June of 2006. It is a 1984, 21’ Chris Craft cuddy cabin with a Mercruiser 260. One late night on e-bay, a few clicks later and we became instant boat owners! We’ve never owned a boat, I haven’t stepped foot on a boat. Now we own one and I was excited!

We had the boat tuned up, moved into our new house on the river and used the boat for about 1 month (mid August to mid Sept). It was fun! We live on the Hudson River in NY and I discovered that I really love boating. While on the river, we noticed nice shiny boats (and a lot of ashy, chalky boats) that drove by us. Needless to say, ours was one of the faded, chalky boats.

The season ended as soon as it begun for us. We shrink wrapped the boat and put it up for the winter. Our boat was named ‘Half Seas’ by the previous owner and we wanted to name it something personal to us. That’s what started the entire boat painting process.

While searching for vinyl letters to rename the boat, I came across painted names and then boot stripes and then top side paint and then….. I decided to paint the boat. Why not? My wife and I are handy. We can do anything we put our hearts and minds to. It’s not that intimidating but it is a little easier said than done.

Step 2: To Strip Or Not To Strip...

Good. I want a fresh paint job and not just a buffed out semi-good looking boat. I then proceeded to use some paint stripper on the thick bottom paint. After a while I scraped it with a plastic paint scraper and the paint gunk dripped on my leg and my arm. Ouch! That stuff has got a little sting to it and burnt the hair off of my leg in the size of a nickel! In addition to that, it only made a mess and didn’t strip off much. I couldn’t even see the original gel coat color beyond the black bottom paint. The next step was the orbital sander. I proceeded to grind with 60 grit and I ended up creating a huge cloud of nasty brownish / blackish dust. I know that bottom paint is toxic so I only did a manageable test spot. It turned out to be dark brown and it was still on thick. The toxic cloud it created on a small 6 inch by 8 inch area was suffocating.

I googled some more info on the net and discovered soda blasting. I found a soda blaster near me (60 miles) and he would do it for a mere $700 dollars! Ouch! So I looked into the pros and cons of sand blasting. There are a few cons to it but it was the traditionally accepted method for a long time. I found a guy who sandblasts tombstones and I asked him if he’s done boats. He said he’s done a few and to remove the bottom paint would be around $60-$80 bucks. I made arrangements for him to do it. What a deal. I ended up giving him 80 dollars and there was an area of about 1 foot wide by 4 foot long strip he couldn’t get. 95% of the bottom was clean. I could live with that.

Step 1: Try Polish Compound First

There was no way we were paying 4500 for a paint job so we called around for a little help. Our friend Casey (owns a marina) said why don’t you just buff it out with some compound and bring the shine back?



After reading extensive articles with different philosophies on boat painting, I bought a Random Orbital Sander for $40 with $35 worth of paint stripper and sand paper in addition to another $30 in compound, 400 grit, etc. I proceeded to compound the topside red paint. No good, not working. I switched to 60 grit….getting it done, working well! Until I found a brown spot that you could see the outline of the Chris Craft logo. I sanded very cautiously to remove this brown shadow from the paint. Within is seconds, I completely removed the paint until I revealed a brown fiberglass spot about the size of the face of a wrist watch. Oops. That was the turning point to the commitment to paint.

Visual Inspection and Assessments

Now for the boat painting part. The bottom paint was thick (to me). There were sections that flaked off and you could see the hull. It looked like a dalmation and I understood that was normal but it needed to be painted. I read a lot of articles on bottom paint and since I trailer my boat, it was best if the bottom of the hull was smooth.

The bootstripe was a joke. Vinyl 3 inch faded reflective tape that had some bare and broken spots on it. There was ZERO gloss to the entire boat and the topside red paint had turned to burnt orange with brown blotchy streaks through it. I had an estimate to paint the boat: $4,500. We paid under $2000 with the dang trailer included for the boat.

The deck is a molded non-slip and of course if we paint the bottom and topside then we might as well do the deck.