Pippins
Member
After many years of active racing and multiple gelcoat touchups including a fiberglass repair of the bow and the port chine I decided it was time to refinish my 1991 Pearson built sunfish (I know, not a great year but I've won many races on this boat and what can I say, it works). Putting another layer of gelcoat wasn't really my idea of a good time so that left me with paint. I do not believe that your drying type enamels, even the marine ones are really durable enough for a beach boat. After looking into Awlgrip and AwlCraft and other marine urethane paints I decided I didn't want to invest nearly $1000 in paint. I ended up deciding to try an experiment and painted my boat with Kirker brand automotive paints. I used 2 coats of their DTM Epoxy primer and 3 coats of their Ultra-Glow urethane top coat. Not being the best painter I did wet sand the primer coat before the top coat. After curing in the sun for a few days I could wet sand the top coat and buff it to a nice shine while removing the few runs I always manage to get. My total cost for the primer and paint was well under $200 and I have enough leftover to paint another boat or two.
A couple things I will note is that you NEED to wear a respirator with a FRESH carbon filter if you do this. With regards to the spraying I was a little handy capped using a gun with a only an 8 inch fan. The sunfish, being larger and doing it in the sun, made it very hard to maintain a wet edge. A gun with a 12 or 14 fan would have made laying the paint faster and saved me some post finishing wet sanding to correct some overspray dry spots (i did the boat in halfs and the overspray was onto the tack free first half). The actual painting goes very fast. I did the two primer coats on different days and the finish coats were all done within an hour. The paint was tack free within ten minutes. I did not fuss over the paint too much as I race this boat and it will see heavy use.
This weekend I put the boat back in the water and I am very impressed so far. Riding in the bed of my pickup with nothing more than a drop cloth didn't mark the paint, neither did dropping it off the dolly while rigging, the laser that sailed directly into my beam (I was on starboard, he on port), or the sand and rock beach I launch from.
To anyone considering repainting a sunfish, I think you should be considering this as a much more durable alternative to open part paints and a much cheaper alternative to the multipart boat paints.
I would also like to thank Kirker paints. Their customer service was extra ordinary. I called with an issue (my mess up) and a real person answered the phone, took my name and number and that morning their technical adviser called me back and was of great help and reassurance.
A couple things I will note is that you NEED to wear a respirator with a FRESH carbon filter if you do this. With regards to the spraying I was a little handy capped using a gun with a only an 8 inch fan. The sunfish, being larger and doing it in the sun, made it very hard to maintain a wet edge. A gun with a 12 or 14 fan would have made laying the paint faster and saved me some post finishing wet sanding to correct some overspray dry spots (i did the boat in halfs and the overspray was onto the tack free first half). The actual painting goes very fast. I did the two primer coats on different days and the finish coats were all done within an hour. The paint was tack free within ten minutes. I did not fuss over the paint too much as I race this boat and it will see heavy use.
This weekend I put the boat back in the water and I am very impressed so far. Riding in the bed of my pickup with nothing more than a drop cloth didn't mark the paint, neither did dropping it off the dolly while rigging, the laser that sailed directly into my beam (I was on starboard, he on port), or the sand and rock beach I launch from.
To anyone considering repainting a sunfish, I think you should be considering this as a much more durable alternative to open part paints and a much cheaper alternative to the multipart boat paints.
I would also like to thank Kirker paints. Their customer service was extra ordinary. I called with an issue (my mess up) and a real person answered the phone, took my name and number and that morning their technical adviser called me back and was of great help and reassurance.