I've been less than happy with the way my topsides paint and boot top have held up this time around and have been researching various paint alternatives for the next haul out...
Back in my starving student days, one of my part-time jobs was spray painting linear polyurethanes in, shall we say, less than user-friendly conditions and as a result am very nervous about any sort of exposure to linear polyurethanes and related solvents/reducers. I am sure I have used up any luck I might have had spraying evil cancer-causing chemicals without the aid of even the most basic safety gear for minimum wage. Seeing how most yards down here in the Caribbean work and handle dangerous chemicals and suchlike, I am even less inclined to let someone else making minimum wage down here possibly ruin their health or kill themselves so I can avoid exposure to myself.
Which kinda of leaves me in one-part paint land but I have noticed that one-part paints seem to hold up less well than they used to. It used to be that using one-part paints seemed to give up to four to five years before needing to be redone but now it seems the longevity is more like two to three... What's a poor boy to do?
I am seriously considering the paint being sold by System Three (bespoke epoxy folks) as it is able to be thinned with water! WR-LPU, while a linear polyurethane, appears to be a whole lot more user friendly than anything else on the market with a big emphasis on being a whole lot safer to use than whatever else is out there on the market. Throw in the fact that it is affordable... What's not to like?
Of course, the true test of any paint system is how it looks and holds up over time and I'll be very interested in seeing what a few cans of WR-LPU do to "So It Goes" in terms of looks and how it holds up (especially in the splash zone).
I'm sure I'll have a whole lot more to say on the subject next haul out!
