So, we get the boat out of the water and up to the work area. After taking 3 people to figure out how to put the pressure washer together and finally being told how to do it by it owner's daughter Laura, we got the growth sprayed off. There were at least 100 pounds of algae and grass growing on the bottom. We ended up using 2 gallons of muriatic acid to get the calcium buildup off.
What we found when the algae and calcuim were gone were fewer blisters than we thought, but larger than we expected. Here are two of the larger blisters.
Here are those same two blisters after being popped to drain. Pretty ugly. It turns out there were about 50 large blisters that needed to be dealt with.
After the boat had dried for a couple of days, we moved on to sanding the old bottom off. It turns out that there was no barrier coat, just Baltoplate Paint over the original factory barrier coat.
Sanding this stuff can be nasty, here is Vic in full monkey suit and facemask to protect himself. Between the two of us, we spent 16 hours sanding the old paint off using 6 inch dual-action electric sanders with 80 sanding disks. Had there been barrier coat underneath the paint, that time would have been doubled or tripled.
