The Owner of the older J24 in Colington Harbor NC came to us to help him refurbish his boat. As with any older boat with limited value there is a big problem investing lots of money into it when the the improvements cost in today’s labor and materials market overshadow the potential resale value of the vessel.
Solution. For this job we agreed that the owner could work on the boat at our site, focusing on the time consuming tasks of sanding, paint prep, masking, and small repairs. Because our labor market is so void of help, it only leaves the business owner to do much of the work, who has a time/value minimum of about $100 per hour, to keep the operation sustainable. This equation doesnt financially make much sense for the highly time consuming work such as sanding and paint prep. Note that all refinishing is 90% prep work and less than 10% spray and product expertise. So in this case, Jon, the owner was happy to do much of the heavy labor intensive operations and save himself a lot of money. Its still not cheap to prep a boat for complete refinishing, but the cost without the hours contributed would have easily made this old j24 refurbish to run over $30,000, which really does not make sense. We are happy to work with boat owners in these situations as long as its clear who is managing the project. When it comes to paint refinishing its important to let the lead painter do the parts of the job that only he/she know how to do well and effeciently, but to do as much of the “other” work as can be done with permission of the boatyard. In this case, the joint effort brought the cost down to under $10k.
Step 1 – Complete removal of all exterior hardware
Step 2 – Core repair, Old crappy repair repair, Shear Line Shape issues repaired. Structural below deck problems repaired
Step 3 – Keel repair. The keel was shedding decades of water intrusion from various patch jobs using different products
Step 4 – Complete Hull and Deck Sanding with 80 g
Step 5 – Factory Nonskid Patterns are not repairable. They have to be filled, faired and converted to sanded nonskid or a sea deck coverage.
Step 6 – Keep finishing all exterior repairs that could effect the paint finish. Interior repairs can be done after exterior refinishing are prioritized back to the owners time.
Step 7 – Primer and Contrast Coatings Process, to find and eliminate imperfections in surface before finish coating
Step 8 – Finish coating. Lately I have had better luck with Alexseal Pricing and Quantity/pricing. Mix ratios are also easier to deal with, so we have been using the AlexSeal products instead of Awlgrip since about 2019.
