LIFE: Part 2

In 2001 we had the boat painted with Awlgrip – decks, coach roof, and everthing else on top.
That turned out to be a big mistake. ‘Perfect Finishes’ in Trinidad did a far-from-perfect job – so much so that we had to come back the following year to have it re-done.

One of the challenges was what do do about the non-skid pattern on our decks. The Awlgrip that was applied, though it still retained the pattern, was way to slippery, but what to use instead that would still look good?

Then one summer back home we needed to fix up our sun deck. The vinyl membrane on it had become sun damaged and looked like it had huge rust patches all over it. So we painted it over with a product called Flexstones which consists of a layer or two of special urethane onto which one sprinkles little plastic flakes and the finally it gets sealed with a final clear top coat.

We were impressed with the finish it produced on our sun deck, so we decided to try it on the boat.

So we ordered a custom supply of white aliphatic urethane and some clear top coat, plus white flakes, which were drop shipped to us at Cape Charles Yacht Center from California.

Because of building our bimini, it took until October before we could get around to doing our decks and the top of the bimini with the new Flexstones product.

The process has three steps: roll on a coat of white aliphatic urethane.

 

Then sprinkle on the colored chips.

Sand these down very gently just to remove any pointy bits. And finish with a coat of clear colourless aliphatic urethane.

With bare feet on wet decks it is still a bit slippery. But with deck shoes the grip seems to be really good.

 

And it looks really good too. At least it does when it is clean. But it does get dirty easily (as did the old decks), but it takes a bit more effort to clean than the Awlgrip or bare gel coat did.

Still, as it is supposed to last for at least a decade, if not two, we are hoping that the non-skid problem is now solved.