Painting a 54' Donzi Sportfish

My big winter project this year is painting the exterior of the boat. Just about everything gets painted except inside the flybridge area as that was recently done. So freeboard of hull, cockpit area, decks, house sides and front, pretty much everything exterior above the waterline. We are also correcting the waterline by lowering it up forward. The waterline was already too high even before I repowered and shed some weight off the boat. So the a/f is being sanded off in these areas in order to paint the freeboard down to a more appropriate place. We marked it before we hauled then shot the new old and new lines in with a laser to establish where it should be. Paint will be AwlCraft. I decided to stay with original colors for ease of maintenance and to minimize any issues from future scratches. The main color is Cream and the mask on the front of the house and around the windows is Flag Blue. I contemplated going more pure white so as not to age the boat but ultimately decided to embrace the vintage reality of my '94 hull and stay true to it. With virtually everything mechanical new, the paint should give me just about the newest '94 out there
The paint crew I hired showed up last week and they are off and running. These guys don't mess around. They are planning to spray first coats in a few days. They are working from the bottom up and we will build scaffolding for them as they go. This way they have clear walking surfaces but don't have any poles in their way as they work and spray. They expect about 6 weeks total for the job plus the additional time needed as they encounter areas that need more than just sand then paint.
My other projects are new canvas in most areas, cockpit freezer door gasket upgrade, new dedicated generator starting battery and a few other misc items. Of course, full maintenance and fluid changes on everything is a given.

Everything we can get off without taking heroic action to remove it. Or, if we gain little by removing it and easier to just mask off.

The waterline change was pretty even down the length. However, the waterline up forward has been too high since I bought the boat. No idea if it came from the factory this way or if somewhere over the years somebody changed it. You can see what I mean in this recent photo:

I do carry a dinghy on the bow. I’m in it taking the photo . It’s a 14’ RIB with Yamaha 50 hp. I’ve never weighed it, but likely in the 1k# range. I accounted for the weight of the dinghy and marked and measured with it on there. There is almost 12” of A/F above the waterline in the bow at full load. I’m lowering the waterline less than half of that so I should be good.

Thanks!. The paint isn’t awful in most areas but it’s tired and has lost it’s luster. The worst area is the dark blue mask on the front of the house. That area is pretty bad. I had that painted about 7 years ago and it didn’t come out good. It now has several half dollar size areas where the fairing underneath failed and chipped off. Has lots of areas that are cracking and generally look terrible. The painter I used last time used the wrong fairing compound. So that will all be removed and renewed in a proper manner this time. The deck up forward also has several areas that no longer come clean. So generally just a nice freshen up is the main goal. Besides, I’m running out of other stuff to dream up to add and don’t have much else to replace anymore.

No, it’s gelcoat from the factory.

Progress is moving right along. The process for this is more involved than I was aware. They clean, wipe everything down, sand everything, then an initial guide coat followed by second sanding, then another guide coat and sanding, then 545 primer followed by 320 grit sanding , two coats of color and a final clear coat. Of course, any imperfections are filled and faired at each step along the way.

The company I hired is World Yacht Refinishing - http://worldyachtrefinishing.com/ So far I have been very impressed by their work.

As mentioned earlier, the FWD Mask was one of the worst areas on the boat. We decided to take this completely down to bare glass. This will get a whole new layer of glass followed by AwlFair and then into the painting sequence. The concern here was past repairs did not provide solid enough substrate and we needed new glass to ensure there is no future cracking or failures. We found several areas under the mask that had repairs either from previous owners or perhaps they were factory flaws from construction? No way to know what went on here but it will be better than new when we are done.

Most of the hull freeboard areas are in the 545 primer now and almost ready for color coats:

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Lots of progress and I have more pics. Unfortunately I cannot easily reduce the picture size on my iPad and I’m not near a computer for awhile. Likely will be next week before I can edit and post. Of all the forums I’m on this is the only one that has such a limited photo size but it is what it is.

Thanks for reply and info. Sorry, my post wasn’t meant to indicate frustration. Just adds another step. I really like this forum so happy to oblige. With most of taking pics these days with phones and their cameras getting better and better all pictures require reducing to post. And whereas that’s pretty easy to do on a computer, neither iPhones or iPads make it easy to do without using an external app or at least I’ve never found another way.