After a month of hard month of scraping, cleaning, and painting… our survey boat ‘Galps’ is finally back in the water where she belongs. Galps is a beautiful, 10 metre long Aquabell power boat with a large back deck and roof deck – perfect for whale watching!
Galps before being repainted
Galps was in need of some proper cleaning up and a new ‘manicure’ (repainting of the hull).
Before applying the new coats of anti-fouling paint, we first had to scrape the old crumbly anti-foul off (which was the equivalent of getting rid of dry skin around nails before applying new polish! Gross!) This took two very long, very tiring days to complete, and resulted in all of us (especially Bryony) looking like blue Smurfs. Don’t worry Mom, we wore protective goggles and faces masks to ensure we did not breath in the anti-fouling dust!
Scraping off the old anti-fouling paint
Once this was completed, we washed down the hull with water to get rid of any left over anti-foul dust and crumbs. At this point, poor Galps almost looked worse off than before.
The next step was to apply primer to the hull (same as applying a primer coat to nails before putting the proper colour on). The primer ensures that the anti-fouling will stick on properly to the hull. Applying the primer took us an entire day but was definitely worth the effort. Not only was the whole process of painting very satisfying to watch, but the end result finally made Galps’ hull uniform in colour and beautiful again.
Newly painted hull (awaiting satisfying removal of masking tape on white edge)
The last step of Galps’ manicure was to apply the anti-fouling paint (i.e. manicure colour). Anti-fouling paint is applied to slow down the attachment of subaquatic organisms to the hull, such as barnacles and algae. This took us longer than the primer painting as we had to apply two coats to ensure full coverage of the hull. It did get a little stressful towards the end as we weren’t sure we’d finish in time to get the boat craned back into the water the next day. Luckily, we got some much needed help from MWDW members. Thank you Sue and Carol!
Finally, Galps was all set to be put back in the water! The crane came to carry the boat into the harbour, and to our delight Galps floated gracefully!
Diary of a Dolphineer 