I began the job of grinding the bottom of the boat on a Wednesday at 1pm. It was not finished until Friday evening. It took forever! The best estimate of size is 420 sq. ft. That's a big area to cover with only a 6 inch sander! There have been many many different layers of paint on this babies bottom. In order for it to be ready to be painted over with a fresh coat, I had to make sure that there were scratches in the old paint so that the new layer could stick. Running up and down ladders for three days was exhausting but so worth it to be able to repaint that entire bottom with a beautiful layer of black.

Photo showing all the layers of paint I was grinding through

I broke one sander after running it for days straight and we were lucky enough to find a similar one for cheap at a pawn shop to piece together one working sander so I could finish the job. All the while I was doing this, it was raining and blowing 45mph outside. Putting the sander over wet paint made the entire texture feel different. There were some pockets of loose paint that had to be dug out and the edges all smoothed out before I could move on to the next area. My favorite part of sanding would have to be seeing all the progress we were making. The worst part was how sore my arms were from holding it over my head for so long. Oh, and I think I got some vibration damage in my hands. They felt like they were asleep for days after!

I always wore the proper safety gear

I was consistently in my own world of jamming out to music or podcasts (usually Tim Ferriss). I constantly had to fumble through my layers of clothing to pause my phone whenever Dylan needed to talk to me.