I have written a couple of posts on my conversion of a 26 Carver Santa Cruz with a V8 fully capable of getting on and maintaining a clean plane over to a baby long range cruiser capable of a cruise speed of 6.1 MPH! One of the projects I did not get to over the last 2 plus years of rebuilding this yacht was the removal of 37 years of bottom paint and adding one thin coat of new paint in its place. Two months ago I decided it was time to do this most disagreeable job I also wanted to replace all 64 rollers on my boat trailer as well as replacing the entire brake system plus a conversion to disc brakes.

After a incredible amount of work scrapping the bottom of the boat by hand with a 2.5 inch scrapper, I would vacuum up the old paint off my driveway with a shop vac., I could not believe how heavy the vacuum had become, I opened it up the first time to find it filled to the top, I repeated the filling and emptying 3 more times before the boat was cleaned off, I captured 128 lbs of old paint it is unknown how much paint I lost as I worked in front of a commercial floor fan blowing on me through out the scrapping process !!

I repainted the bottom of the boat and did all trailer work, the boat was actually capable of being winched 2 feet on the trailer with the new rollers, very happy as it would not move a inch before the rollers were changed! I now wonder if the removal of the very rough thick paint from the bottom will have any effect on my cruise speed, who knows maybe I can get her up to 6.2 MPH!