Preparing Your Boat for Bottom Paint

At Jim's Marine, we take out time before protecting your boat with Anti-foulent paint. Preping your baots surface, is one of the most important things we do for our customers, season after season. Many times the answer is not as simple as a light sanding and solvent wipe.

We check for blisters. Hull blisters in fiberglass boats are generally a cosmetic, not structural, problem. Small ones can safely be left alone for later treatment at the next bottom job, but if there is significant blistering on a boat, it should be repaired before bottom painting. Water seeps through gelcoat and fiberglass resin over time, and a chemical reaction results that slowly erodes the plastics while producing internal pressure that stretches the hull skin, forming the blister.  hull that has blistered once will probably do it again, and a hull that has been in the water for a long time without blistering may never do so, or a change in environment may cause a sudden onset of the problem.

Barrier coat hull prep begins with removing undesired material. That can mean peeling the gelcoat with a machine or just removing old paint by media blasting. At Jim's Marine, we customize the type of media for the application, and the severity of the build up on the hull.  Once all foreign material is completely removed and the hull is fair and smooth, when then begin preparations for paint.