When I first tackled the starboard side of the keel (see Keel Work) I used a hand scraper to remove all the loose paint followed by a random orbit sander. It was a lot of work which took a few days and while it worked, I had some very sore shoulders.

For the port side I turned to power. I realized after finishing the starboard side that I had an oscillating tool with a paint scraper blade. So, with 2 long extension cords I started working with the oscillating tool and made quick work of removing the loose paint. What took hours of manual scraping took less than 45 mins to complete. I followed up the paint scraping with a wire wheel on my drill, in about 1.5 hours there was no loose paint remaining.

By the time I got to this point it was mid-July and I wanted to get the boat into the water and have some enjoyment on the water this summer. I decided that at this point the keel condition was good enough for a coat of paint and to get wet.

I made sure that I hit any areas that looked like they might be rust with the wire wheel a second time and after a wash down and drying I hit the exposed metal areas with a rust inhibiting primer.

Once the primer dried, I gave the keel a coat of Bottomkote XXX. After giving the BottomKote XXX 24 hours to cure I set to work on cleaning the caked on Alge off the hull but that’s another post.