Eating the elephant

Now that it has turned somewhat cooler I've resumed  painting bits of Herbie. Odds and ends you might call them but they really needed doing.

First the bulkhead either side of the aft doors which had becaome faded and grotty. So lots of rubbing and cleaning then scraping and filling then more rubbing and more cleaning  and washing with sugar soap then white spirit then tack ragging got us to this.

After all that the actual painting only took a few minutes and now it looks like this

Any odd looking patches you see are actually relections.

The worst bit of rust on the whole boat I think has been the side hatch lid which in the spring looked like this

All that deeply pitted rust is where the old wooden handrail was.  

After much grinding and sanding and filling and sanding and filling and more sanding we got to this

which is actually fairly smooth, so after cleaning and tack ragging I slapped on an undercoat today and now we have this

Whoo hoo that's better. Once again umpteen hours prep and ten minutes painting. When we started I couldn't imagine it getting as good as that even it's not perfect. Top coats and the red stripe on the edge to come.  Then the dreaded hatch doors which are pretty ropey right now.

Meanwhile I've been prepping the aft cabin doors so they're ready for painting now.  Maybe tomorrow if the weather is right.

So one bite at a time we are eating the elephant.