Painting -- Boot Stripes Kick Me in the Pants

The road to painting has been a long one, a struggle that jeopardizes whether or not I can make it into the water this year.  Due to a global shortage of paint, I had to special order most of the paint and then work with whatever was left on the shelves at the Marine Store.  It was slim pickins at best.  And let me also give a quick shout out to the Marine Store salesperson who, when I asked if the Micro Extra Shark White was in stock, flatly told me that "they don't make bottomcoat in any color but black."

Now, I could accept any of the following answers:  "We don't have any other color but black,"or, "I've never seen any color but black," or even, "Shark White?  Did you make that up?"  But to state some Henry Fords-ian black-is-all-there-is is just plain misguided.  I mentioned this to the manager when I quickly abandoned the conversation with this salesperson and he only blinked a couple times and shook his head.  Within a few minutes, I had a special order Trilux33 white on the way up from West Palm Beach.

I got the Trilux33 down pretty quickly over the sanded primer fiasco from a couple weeks ago, let that dry, added two more coats, then moved onto the boot stripe.  Here, again, I wasn't planning a boot stripe but I think they do look pretty cool and I wasn't quite ready to flip the boat so I thought I'd might as well add a little flair to my little boat.

After some time trying to figure out how to trace a straight line, I decided to use the bottom blue topsides as a guide, mark off an inch from there with a strip of tape, leave the middle two inches bare, and then mark off the top inch.  That left two inches of striping.  I had some leftover Dark Blue topsides for once so the idea was to use that along the sides.  I first tested using two strips of frog tape (equaling two inches) but then switched to my two-inch roll which made it far easier.

 

 

I traced this pattern around around the boat and marked up the transom.  This took a couple hours as I really wanted this to look good.  Given how sharp a line I got with the topsides, I didn't think there'd be a problem with the blue stripe.

 

 

 

From a distance, it doesn't look too bad.  Some other blog says it's a "3-foot paint job" and that's about right.  But the first hint something was wrong when the paint was still tacky even 48 hours after painting.  This was really unusual given the warm weather, low-humidity, and how the topsides went down earlier.

 

As you can see, the paint bled through the frog tape and caused all sorts of little ripples along the white.  I can only think this happened because I put topside paint on a bottom coat paint (this was straight up painted on Trilux33 and not primer).  The paint mixed a little bit, didn't set right, and then leaked through.  Bummer.

I was almost inconsolable but my wife said it looked good, and no one's going to notice when the boat's in the water, and that this will all need to come off in 3 years or so when we redo the paint.  All of this is true, but it's no less painful.  I thought about sanding this over again but I'm out of paint and I am not/not dropping another $50 on this project.  Onto the bow eye and the centerboard.

Re-sand, Re-paint, Re-pair

The second coat of primer had just barely dried when I reached for the final bottom coat.  I was moving along well and was excited to get the bottom done before moving to the topsides.

However, I couldn't shake something about the bottom paint so I went back to the PocketShip manual and the paint specs and realized I'd put topcoat primer, not bottom coat primer, below the waterline.  Big deal?  Wasn't sure.

A couple hours of research later definitely said yes, it's a big deal.  Not only would the water and rough stuff eventually wear its way through, but the actual bottom coat would not stick well to the topcoat primer.  The only thing to do was to sand it all off and reapply the proper bottom coat primer.  The level of defeat I felt was not good so I let it sit this way for a couple days and didn't even open the garage.

When I finally did, I decided to ignore the bottom and move to the topsides.  The grey primer went on quickly and looks good.  Most importantly, it was the right paint for the right job.  Once the topsides primer dried, it was time to get sanding.  So I pulled up my big boy pants, fired up a podcast (or 12) and sanded away about $50 of paint and a million dollars of hubris.  I only have bits of the keel to go before I wash this down and put the proper paint on.

Speaking of proper paint, here is the lineup I was planning to use.  I took this photo just before heading to the Marine Store so I knew which paint to get.

 

 

 

When I got to the Marine Store, like many other stores out there, they were really, really down on inventory and didn't have Ocean Blue, the color I chose for my boat. This color, I was told, would need to be special-ordered and take 2-4 weeks to get to the store.  In fact, this color was normally not in stock and I would need to special-order it every time.  He then helpfully said that Dark Blue is almost always in stock and they replenish that one regularly.

 

Faced with these choices, I decided to make a change to the color.  So, welcome to Dark Blue -- which is incidentally the same color as PocketShip #1.  I wanted a brighter blue but there wasn't really an option if I wanted to make progress.  The other in-stock options were black and red.  I had the red in my hand and decided with the tanbark sail I ordered, it wouldn't look great.  Black would've been interesting but I thought too dark for such a small, perky boat.  It would be like a goth cheerleader; too much of a disconnect.

 

While there, I also picked up West System epoxy and a set of epoxy pumps.  The pumps alone were almost reason enough to switch from MAS to West (MAS still isn't shipping with pumps due to a "global pump shortage.")  West was also about $75 cheaper for an equivalent volume including the price difference and saving on shipping.  In the end, it paid for the wasted primer and contributed a bit towards the right one.

Hoping to get this painting done this weekend and get it on the trailer I just purchased.  Yes, that happened.

Road to Painting

Sanding the world's largest small boat was no fun but it's done, and I'll leave it at that.  With that chore behind me (for now -- I know I have all the top layers still to do) I turned my attention to painting.  This was something I'd been looking forward to for a long time and was excited to get started, which translates to staring at the boat for long hours thinking about how to pull off this next major phase of the build.

 

The first thing I needed to do was to ensure the boat was still level after all that sanding, including hours of sitting on the hull.  Here's a leveler that shows pretty flat but not exactly flat.  Will this cause an issue?  I don't know.  I couldn't see where to fix it so I called it good and made myself aware of a possible correction later.

At least the transom seemed to be straight up and down and left and right.  (I purchased a laser leveler for $40 from a Big Online Company) as well as a tripod for it to sit upon.

Like many builders before, I used the leveler to trace a line in pencil around the boat.  This is where the line from the topsides crosses the chine into the bottom half of the hull.  Part art, part science, I decided to use the "lower line" here for painting.  You can see the faint red line from laser to the left of this photo.

I noticed that somehow the line I was tracing on the starboard hull was a little lower than the line I traced on the port side.  I think it's "heeling over" just a couple degrees so my line wasn't quite even?  Not sure.  It was straight, just maybe a half inch or so lower all across the hull.  That implies that the correction would be half the variance on one side negative and half on the other positive.

I decided to check this by hanging a ruler off the chine and marking the hull where the line would be and sure enough it was consistently lower.

 

So I marked off from the bow every foot or so and wrote down the distances for confirmation, then transferred those measurements to the other side and confirmed again with the laser.  I didn't bother with the "half here half there" math and just applied the full variance.

 

As precise as I wanted to be, the reality was anything within a quarter inch or so would be acceptable and anything better than that would be fantastic.  So writing "7/16" and "9/16" and then accurately transferring that to the hull was aspirational at best.

 

By eye, I laid down some frogtape for the curve at the transom.  I'm going to mirror PocketShip #1's design here by having a "boot strap" run around the waterline.  I used a sheet of paper to trace the curve of the tape, cut this out, and transposed and then transferred the curve to the other side for a match.  

 

 

 

I am glossing over this process a bit.  In reality, it took a couple days, a couple hours each time, and a lot of frog tape to finally satisfy my OCD.  Some builders simply painted to the corner and called it a day.  I don't know why I can't be some builders sometimes.  All I can do now is pray that I don't embarrass myself by having a wavy, uneven waterline. 

 

But before painting, I had to re-open the centerboard slot, a task I'd been avoiding.  Sitting on the hull, using some combination of box cutter, pliers, and the random orbital, this was a bit of a bear and caused quite the mess.  I briefly regretted putting so much 'glass here as I was cutting through it, but eventually appreciated that this is one strong boat.  There is a lot of angst over keel damage and many builders have reinforced this area with epoxy'd rope, graphite, and Kevlar.  I went with traditional 'glass -- just a lot of it.

One thing I wasn't ready for was the amount of stuff that fell into the slot -- bits of 'glass and sanded 'glass and whatever else had accumulated in the garage over the years.  I might have to fashion a vacuum hose to get down there, or alternatively, I can try to blow it out.  I can reach the very bottom of it through the inspection plates on the centerboard trunk but I can't reach the "shelf" as it sits now.  If I let it go like this I'm guaranteed a jam so I'll have to figure out a way to get in there.

I also noticed that while taking this down to a "grey matte finish" I went through a bit too far here and there.  So, again, out came the epoxy!  This is actually serious business to get this right as at least one PocketShip suffered some water damage at the centerboard slot because of sanding through to bare wood.  The swelling of the wood caused the centerboard to jam and that's not an experience I'd like to repeat.

 

After waiting for that to cure and then sanded down again, out came the painting supplies -- finally.

And came up with this --

 

The pictures are way better than the actual painting project.  This was just primer, after all, soon to be covered in "Shark Grey" anti-fouling paint, but it's still pretty great to get to this point.  Over the next couple days I'll have to source a trailer and some more primer, but for now I'll call it a day!

Sandy Bottoms

The last few days have been a blur with many lost hours sanding and re-sanding this enormous boat.  There hasn't been much of an update on this because the incremental progress doesn't translate well to photos or writing or mental health.

Since the big fiberglass episode of 2020, I've sanded the whole hull down to a dull grey, as described.  The manual describes "a full day" could be dedicated to sanding the hull, but it was really more than a week, 2-3 hours a session.  I simply don't have the stamina or the patience to dedicate more than that.  But it got done partly with the help of podcasts.

As a side note, I never really got into podcasts.  I'm the perfect demographic for it, but as a hyper-visual learner, the idea of listening instead of reading never really appealed to me.  Faced with the hours-long choice of the shopvac or the dulcet tones of a journalist or storyteller and maybe learning something, I opted for the latter.

I started with Serial: Season One (the one that really started it all); NASA We Have a Podcast; 1619; The Sultanate (a podcast from an expat in Oman where I will be moving this fall); Every Little Thing; and a couple others.  It really makes the sanding just a bit more enjoyable, and I feel like I've entered a new realm of cultural awareness.  Don't get me wrong -- sanding still sucks, and I'm not listening to podcasts when I'm not sanding, but it is a much better enterprise.  To put the hours in perspective, I finished Serial: Season One and at least a couple dozen sessions of the others during this sanding effort.  Gird your loins, fellas!

Here's the start of it with about a third of one side done sanded down.  This took about 3 hours.  I used 80 grit to get the first stuff down and went over it again with 120 where needed.

 

After awhile, I moved to the topsides and got as far as this before putting down the Bosch and thinking about actually sailing.

Luckily, Chris, a fellow PocketShip builder who lives in the area asked if I wanted to go for a run.  And how!  So after a couple scheduling stops and starts, we were off on a spirited day on Lake Waconia, getting back just ahead of sunset, but not after a great dinner at a lakeside restaurant.

I promised not to pepper Chris with too many questions, but I was just getting back into the flow of things and needed answers.  He was more than happy to oblige, as always, and I'm grateful to call him a friend and source of motivation.  His boat still looks amazing after almost 10 years.

I still had the beast in the garage to deal with, along with a couple logistical problems.  The first was to deal with the various layers.  While sanding, these layers become exposed as lines which are actually small depressions where two layers meet up.  It can be difficult to sand these down well because it's easy to burn too deeply through a layer of glass.  I knew this would be the tradeoff between a horizontal 'glassing job (where you take the 'glass and spread it aft-forward instead of across the beam) so I wasn't surprised to see it.  There's also a risk that the painting will not be entirely uniform over these areas.  Time will tell.

One area that did surprise me was this fenced area on the port side.  For some reason the epoxy here was really light.  A quick rub with the sander exposed fiberglass layers and a sheen underneath.  I can only conclude that I didn't apply a second or third layer here -- and this was only really discovered after sanding it down a bit.

So, out came the epoxy and a couple wasted hours!  This of course needed to be sanded down again, along with a couple small patches because why not.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about how to level the keel.  It's kind of tough to see from the above photo but I spent a couple days figuring this out.  I have a much bigger garage than I did when I started this (I literally moved next door a few years ago) but a much smaller house.  That meant stuff wound up in the garage and in practice my workspace is much smaller.

 

I used a couple small 2-ton jacks and jackstands I was going to return to Amazon to flatten the keel.  The tradeoff was I couldn't use the furniture dollies as I couldn't get the bow high enough to level it out.  After a few hours over a couple days, here is the result:

The angle of the photo is actually a bit off.  The middle bubble is centered and the boat lies flat.  The photo reminds me of a little spaceship hovering over the grey landscape of a moon.  Of course, just after this photo, I bumped the keel and the spaceship fell off and disappeared into the garage.  I still haven't found it.  Whatever.  Onto painting!

The Rise of Sun Monkey

A lifetime ago, I shut down PocketShip production for a job that would take me away from everything I'd known for the last 10 years.  Two years in Nigeria and two years in China later, with a year in Washington in between, and here we are, back in the garage!

I never knew when I'd be able to come back to it, if ever, except maybe if I found a job in Washington where I could drag the dregs of the boat from garage to garage and hope my work hours and neighbors allowed me to sand at all hours of the night.  But thanks(?) to the COVID situation, where all training has moved online, I'm back in Minnesota at least through October and maybe longer.

When I moved the last time, I packed up most of my stuff and shipped it to storage.  This included all of my shop gear:  sanders, drill press, table saw, routers, clamps, miter saw, horses, etc, etc.  I'm pretty much devoid of all.  I can pull the stuff out of storage, but it'll take $300 and 3 months to get here, and that doesn't seem worth it.  So what to do?  Order more stuff, I guess.

I prioritized a new orbital sander and a shop vac.  Then I got on the horn with Ed at CLC and asked what he recommended to finish the boat.  Three days, 26 yards of 'glass, and a MAS epoxy kit later, I'm back in business.  Interestingly, there was a little pamphlet with the MAS kit that said the little pumps were not available due to COVID.  With supply chains disrupted they gave detailed instructions on how to pour into cups and mix them that way.  That will not be fun.

I also dug up all sorts of memories: all the lines, the lovely portholes and anchor chocks, the electronics, tiller, boom gallows, and even stuff off the old MacGregor that didn't make it to the Sea Scouts.  It was a trip down memory lane!  I even found my old paint.  Unopened, I'm sure they're OK.  I think?

I then dusted off the hull from whatever's been on it.  Still a little work to do here.

One place I didn't go was into the cabin itself.  I'm afraid to look in there as I fear something's camped in the cabin before I could.  But a little fear is good:  it keeps people motivated to take care but keep going.  And I plan to keep going as far as I can in the short time I have.

Sun Monkey rises again!

And Now for the Front - Bow and Forward Locker Prep

There is a chapter in "The Book Thief" when Hans Hubermann, the girl's father, mixes paint to help his fellow citizens paint their windows black. This is to prevent anyone from being able to easily spy in their windows. Apparently, painting in 1940's Germany was a skill much more involved than schlepping down to the local Sherwin Williams to buy a gallon of primer.

I mention this because one of my goals today was to paint the first layers of primer in the forward locker. I dutifully cracked open the can of primer that sat in my basement and behold, it was complete muck. Runny, oily liquid with a thick middle not unlike meringue but thicker and far less delicious. If I were Hans Hubermann, I might have mixed up some magical concoction and saved the day (much like the book). But alas, I am not, so, onward to Sherwin Williams I went to plop down another $30 towards their revenues for the year. About an hour later, I had the first layer down where it now sits drying.

First layer of primer. I'm not sure I want to paint the xylophone/battery holder. I got a little paint on the electrical conduit so figured I'd paint the whole thing. It looks terrible. Not sure what to do about that now.

View through the locker holes. I had the vacuum in here as I prepped the area for painting.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I cut the two additional 'seatback supports' with my bandsaw that will serve as mini dashboards in the cockpit lockers. These will sit about 3 inches aft of the structural ones and will contain the 12V outlets among other things. Since the real support backer sits right along bulkhead 8, a hole drilled just aft of that will allow access to the laz areas. A thru-hull here or similar thing will keep the area watertight. I'll be able to access this through the speaker hole. I'll lose about 3-4 inches of locker area but it will be worth it to be able to run electronics into the cockpit easily. I only wish I'd run a stereo input cable forward. Oh well, next boat.

New seat backer dashboards.

I also put the 2nd coat of epoxy onto the aft cabin wall. I put a seat backer there to give an idea of how big this thing actually is. One more coat tonight and then sanding tomorrow and this can get stitched in after painting and stuffing the bow with foam. I decided I'm going to try to keep a couple 'bright' windows on the side that faces the cockpit. I've seen this in other boats and it looks terrific. To that end, I carefully inspected both sides and this epoxy side is the one that will face inside and will be painted white. This is mainly due to the football-like shape on the left side of the cabin wall. Not sure what this is but it'll go away soon enough.

Aft cabin 2nd layer of epoxy.

I'm told things accelerate pretty quickly from here. With lots of hard work, I've seen people go from this point to launch in about 4 months. I don't think I can dedicate that much time but will keep on going.

Snowbound No More

Hard to believe in mid-November that it's warmer here than Atlanta. I'd know, because I've spent the better part of the last two weeks in Georgia (and for good measure, a day in Reno). Why isn't really important.. what is important is that I'm happy to report that the garage is a comfy 75 degrees with the heater as the outside temp hit nearly 50 degrees here. That's convertible down and shorts weather. We're expected to be into the low 50's until Wednesday, then the floor will drop out from under us like a gallows. That means I have until Wednesday to get whatever epoxy down until next season.

As a reminder, I'm in Minnesota, yes, that one, the Great White North and the butt of many, many Fargo jokes, usually from people living in New York who think they live in some tropical oasis. In fact, when I was in Reno, one guy went on for a few moments about how cold Minnesota was, and I let him go for a bit. When he was done, I reminded him that it was warmer there than it was here (it was 37 degrees in Reno at the time). Some people need to look at their thermometers before dissing other weather patterns. And for the record, I'd much, MUCH rather live in Minnesota than Reno.

With that out of the way, I spent the better part of the afternoon destepping the mast from the Macgregor. Technically, it was already destepped. Removing it is more like it: jib, mast, boom, chainplates, and all. I'm taking the hull and trailer about an hour south of me to a town called Hastings. She'll sit on some guy's lawn until spring for $25 a month. Since I had to take the sails off for storage, and I'd like to rewire the mast for a mastlight and redo some of the running rigging, I stuffed everything in the garage next door. To my surprise, they barely fit. I thought there'd be plenty of room, which makes me think the boat probably wouldn't have fit in there.

The sail sat in my living room for a bit as it dried out. With fair warning about rodents from fellow PocketShip builder Chris, I'll have this stored with a few cats I'll recruit from the neighborhood. That's what I think he meant by keeping rodents away, I think.

Living room a loft as I spread out the Macgregor sail. The electric outboard sits above.

Once everything was stored, and the interior of the Macgregor cleaned for transit, I set to re-paint PocketShip's cabin. My original vision for the cabin color was an eggshell white, an offwhite that wouldn't be glaring, but still bright enough so the cozy cabin wouldn't feel like a cave. I thought I found that in "Snowbound," a cool white (meaning a slightly blue tint) that looked great in the showroom but blinding in the garage. I knew I was in trouble when my wife saw the finished paint job and asked if I actually painted, since it wasn't much different from the primer. Admittedly, it was a few levels of white higher than I wanted, but another gallon of paint would cost $50 and Snowbound, though bright, went on great. So I firmly resisted the color change and all the work that would have to go with it, such as taking out the installed conduit and bilge pump. I wasn't going to repaint, no sir..

But then I realized I'd painted over the spot where the pendant sheave needs to go on the centerboard trunk, meaning I'd have to sand the paint off to find it. When I did that, I noticed that the original kit-drilled hole was too small, so I drilled a slightly bigger hole for the bolt I'm installing so I could epoxy that back over and have a nice protective ring of epoxy around the bolt. (Note to new builders: I'd recommend expanding that hole size another 1/8" or so to fit the sheave bolt. Fill it with epoxy as normal.) That means I repainted the entire cabin because I had an unpainted spot about the size of a postage stamp. But it would be Snowbound no more!

The offending pendant sheave hole which caused the whole thing to get a facelift.

This time, I knew better how to pick the color. With Snowbound, I erred on the side of bright. For this, I erred on the side of dark. I settled on "Choice Cream" and as it went on, I knew instantly I made the right choice. Whereas before, the white was so blinding I felt like I was back in the office in Minnesota, this looks like I'm swimming in butter. I'll probably hate it after a year but for now, it's a lot better than it was before. And since the original paint basically acted like a primer, I didn't have to do any prep except for a little sanding here and there.

Overhead view of the first coat of the "cream". Much softer than before. The original color is along the top of bulkhead 2, which I didn't repaint as I shouldn't have painted it the first time..

The bilge pump outlet (right) and electrical conduit signed, sealed, and delivered on bulkhead 8. The wire is a RAM3 (VHF radio extension) that will run from the starboard locker to the storage locker in the cabin. Sealed with epoxy.

Finished dashboard with trim. I left this Snowbound so as not to risk painting the trim. Figure it'll stand out nicely.

I put on the first coat of cream and just finished the second coat. Snowbound the color will likely wind up in the cockpit, though I'm a little nervous about it being too bright underway, so I'll test it come spring. I'd hoped to be further along, but I've given up on a timetable. These extra days are bonus. They're certainly warm enough to work; the weather will cooperate through mid-week. And with the garage in the 70's, who knows how far I'll get before I really need to shut down for the season.

Two Down.. Make that Three.. Five.. Make that Four.. to Go

As expected, it hit 57 degrees here in Minnesota today. For those of you south of the Mason-Dixon line, or indeed, south of Minnesota, that's not a big deal. But for us, it's cause to celebrate. In fact, it was a near-perfect sailing day and more than once I commented that if PocketShip were done, we'd be out in it. Still, it's a bit cool to be painting as overnight lows will be in the 30's, so we got a space heater extraordinaire to help. It easily raised the temperature 20 degrees and made it downright lukewarm in the garage. There's hope I can extend the season a little bit with this little guy working wonders in the rear. Of the shop.

About 2/3 of the way done with the first coat.

Painting, though exciting for what will come, isn't terribly in and of itself. Sure, there's latex gloves and a gas mask to wear, but that's protection not entertainment. The boat is tricky to get in and out of as it is, let alone while trying to be careful. One small move and I'd be wearing Sherman Williams' finest all purpose primer. It's exhausting work, requiring a contortionist skill set while trying to balance on two planks of cedar I had leftover from a planter project this summer.

I got the first coat down, cleaned up for dinner, came home, changed, and put down the second coat. By the time I finish writing this and catch up on the news of the day, it'll be ready for the third coat. That's a lot of coats in a day but the primer seems able to handle it. Indeed, the label says at 77 degrees, coats can go on about 60 minutes. It's 70 in the garage so I'll test it in about 90 minutes. If the weather holds up, I might be painting the topcoat tomorrow. There's a big sale coming up (40% off paint) in a couple weeks but by then it might be too cold. Decisions, decisions!!

Second coat finshed, a few hours later.

Our usual paint supplier is Sherman Williams. They have an outlet store a few blocks from the house. Our old neighbor, let's call him Stan, was a professional house painter and in fact painted our bedroom trim. By all accounts, he was a pretty good painter, but not very good with women. To clarify, he was pretty good with women, but not very good with good women. The last one took him for pretty much everything he owned and he ultimately foreclosed on his house. His legacy, though, was leaving us with his account at Sherman Williams. They seem to be fairly knowledgeable, certainly more than the Big Box guys, so when I walked in last week looking for paint, I interviewed the poor fellow for a good 10 minutes before setting on what I wound up buying.

First coat done, working on footwell. You can't see it, but I'm sweating buckets here.

Just like wood, just like epoxy, just like glue, paint comes in all sorts of sizes, flavors, and "enhancements." Most of the noise is plain marketing nonsense, but some of it is relevant. UV protection and water resistance is real. Everything else is kinda fluff. I settled on some pretty good latex exterior house paint for the interior of the cabin and what will be the cockpit. I figured, like some others, that this will save a little bit of money as I can probably get through the painting with one gallon. I also think it'll look nice as the same "satin eggshell" I'm going for will be inside and out.

I'm also painting the outboard sides of the footwell. This is the side that faces the cabin. For some reason, a few PocketShips I've seen haven't painted them. I'm sure it's because they went in later and builders figured no one would see it, anyway. I guess that's true, but I had a brush in my hand and they were standing there, staring at me, so paint they get. Of course, I haven't done the transom or the forward locker, having decided to wait until the speaker boxes go in. One step at a time, even for painting.

Update: Fast forward in time to the 3rd coat down..

After the third coat. Much better coverage. I don't think I'll do a 4th.

Looking aft. Considering whether or not to fill in the small gaps where the fiberglass on the cleats gave me some trouble. Figure a little marine caulk should do it.

Outboard footwell sides (the sides facing into the cabin) and dashboard with 3rd coat. Heating element courtesy of Costco brings the garage up to 60'.

Looking forward.The "bright" area is the forward part of the footwell, which will be highly visible underway, and will get its own treatment when the time comes.