Starting to Prime

I've decided that the way to do this is to paint the bottom now, but leave the sides for later (after the deck is on). With that in mind, I headed over to Home Depot and got a can of oil-based primer.

I want to paint the boat a really dark blue. Looking through the HD color books, they have one they call "Night Tide" that looks pretty good.

Problem is, there isn't enough room in the primer can for enough tint to get it that dark. So we ended up with a pretty ugly blue color instead. That's Lydia helping out. You can also see where I masked off where the centerboard slot is going to be. I'll end up running some glass from the inside of the slot onto the bottom of the boat, and don't want to have to scrape off the paint first.

The primer went on really smooth and easy. Now that we have a little more room in the can, I'm going to run it back up to HD and get more tint added before putting on a second coat.

I put a little electric space heater under the hull. Its pretty chilly right now. I put this first coat of primer down last night, and was surprised that 12 hours later its not full dry. Hmmm....

Once it is dry, I'll hit it with the sanding block, then another coat of primer, or two, (or three) depending.