The Ashley Grey gets Color!

Boat is still upside down for the painting process. The paint is made by Pettit,a company specializing in marine paints. The boat was first primed with Pettit undercoat and then lightly sanded. The hull, except for the molding, top strake  and rail, is painted a polyurethane topcoat color with the imaginative name 'Off White'.

The molding strip and front and rear badges are painted Interlux polyurethane color called 'Sunburst Yellow. I have always liked the contrast of yellow against blue, and think it really suits a boat. I also wanted a color theme that was similar to the HMS Bounty(see first entry in this BLOG).

Towards the stern, the painted hull is seen, centerboard slot at the top.

You can see the top strake(plank) which is painted a Pettit topcoat polyurethane called 'Ocean Blue'. The photos don't do this color justice. This blue was made for this boat.

The bottom of the boat shown towards the bow, again, the centerboard slot is  seen. There are two coats of paint at this point.

Painting the boat was something I had thought about since it's inception. It seemed that most Penobscots I saw on the internet, including the P14 owned by the designer, Arch Davis, had a white hull. The white does it justice by accenting, through more easily seen shadowing effect on the overlapping planks. I thought long and hard as to whether to use color or just keep it simple and paint everything white. But after much thinking and imagining and playing with colored pencil drawings, I decided on some type of blue for the top strake and bright yellow for the molding and badges. I picked colors off the Pettit color chart on their website, but used Interlux brand for the yellow since the West Marine store had it in stock. It took about 3 weeks to complete the paint job. Incidentally, the transom was not painted, just clear coated and varnished, which gives a nice contrast. The part of the stem that emerges above the breasthook is not yet painted, just primed. I think I will keep it simple and paint that 'Off White' to match the lower hull.

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