During last autumn I have set out with a “small” project, or at least that is what I thought then, to give a refresh to Veloce’s bottom. As I had notice that the paint coming off in some areas close to waterline and on the keel, I decided to remove the old one and start afresh and changing from a polishing antifouling to a hard one with race finish.
Getting out of the water 
Rudder unfairness revealed 
First scraping round 
Get a good sander 
Countless dark hours
What I will do
- removal of self-polishing anti-fouling Hempel Mille
- fairing the hull, keel and rudder
- redefining keel and rudder trailing edges
- painting with International VC TAR – 5 layers with alternating colors
- painting with International VC 17 grey
Here’s how I went about the first step and part of the second:
After countless trials and change of tools I finally found the right equipment, or what worked best for me anyway.
I scraped off the entire bottom paint with a Bahco paint scraper, with 3 blades: flat wide, triangular and pear shaped. Quite pricey, but worth every cent. You probably need to give a try to a cheap one for understanding what I am talking about.
I then sanded everything with an oscillating sander from Bosh and grit 120/180. I tried not to go through the existing epoxy layers, however I found that in spite of the nice smoothness, I was not satisfied with the surface fairness and since I already employed some 150h work, it was worth doing a really good job. I used a hand sander with a long base (70cm) to resand the entire bottom (except keel) with grit 180/240. This gave a very good surface.
I then resanded everything with the oscillating sander grit 420/600.
In spite of the painstakingly slow and painful work I found that countless hours staring at a grey mass is very much comparable to meditating or performing yoga. Thankfully audiobooks exist nowadays.
The keel has some rust stains and the metal has a very unfair surface and very thick trailing edge. I then decided to sort that out to get my mind at peace. Because of the epoxy application temperature, I am waiting a few more weeks for the job and the description of the process. I suppose that when I will be to it, I will refresh the rudder trailing edge as well.