Dude! You can’t title the blog that! People are going to think you’re talking about wanking?
Well, to be fair they are very similar! Hear me out.
Do you remember Karate Kid where Mr Miyagi gets Daniel to wax on and wax off to help him build muscles and a bit of karate technique? Yes? Well sanding a boat is nothing, absolutely nothing like it. In fact it is so fucking far removed I have no idea why I even mentioned Karate Kid.
I didn’t dive in and start sanding the hull straight away, I actually did a bit of research first. What sort of sandpaper, how much paint should I take off, was there a special technique to how you sanded the boat? Armed with new knowledge garnered from YouTube I tackled the task with vigour. Estimating it would take me at least a whole weekend to get the hull prepared enough to give her a first coat of paint.
Oh how I was mistaken. I thought I’d start with the transom and soon discovered that my darling boat was hiding a hideous secret. Under that faded and I imagine a once vibrant blue, she was yellow. A custard/mustard yellow that I believe was once popular in the 1970s.
Once the yellow paint was exposed I decided that I would not stop sanding until the whole transom was at least showing yellow. Have I mentioned how shit I am with using tools? No? Well I am. There’s no getting away from it. If you look carefully at the transom you will see patches appearing where I’d even taken the yellow off to expose just the fibreglass. What tool was I using? It’s an electric sander I got from B&Q for I think £20. No, I’d never used one before. Just the transom alone took me the best part of the day. A daunting thought if ever there was one. I still had the whole goddamned hull to do.
Just like when you embark on a journey of self pleasure, you start gently, gradually increasing the pace of your arm, stroking and pulling harder until you get the desired result. Arm muscles aching, a hot sweat and a nice and smooth transom. Of course when sanding fibreglass you’re supposed to wear a mask and protective clothing. If you’re a prime idiot like myself you ignore that advice because you just know better.
Some tips about sanding fibreglass:
Wear a shirt
Ensure you wash your hands before going for a pee
If you think stinging nettles are evil bastards wait until you feel the constant prickling of fibreglass embedded in your skin. See the featured image above? That dear reader was me after rubbing one out. It was a selfie taken after sanding all day, putting a t-shirt on and then going for a piss. Yes, I’m in the toilet stall. No. I don’t know why I took a selfie in there. Quit asking.
Later in the day I started sanding the hull. It took fucking ages, like the day before and I got so far and had to give up for the day. It took a few weekends and the sanding got boring real quickly. The hull was starting to bore me so I started on the upper part of the boat.
I spent so many hours sanding that eventually my sander gave up mid-morning on the first day of one particular weekend. Rather irate and not wanting to waste the day by going home I fired up my drill, stuck on a 60 grit sanding disc and went mad. Like really mad. Fuck Karate Kid, fuck technique, fuck all the knowledge and advice I’d read about. I started to sand like a maniac.
Holy.Fucking. Shit! I couldn’t believe it, in one day I’d managed to do the whole hull bar below the waterline. Those Boat Wankers are fucking thick, why the hell use 80 grit paper on a proper sander when you could just use a cheap fucking drill? I’ll tell you why dear reader, it’s because 60 grit sandpaper scratches the fibreglass underneath the paint and I actually now have to redo the whole fucking hull with 80 and then 120 grit paper to get it smooth enough to throw a layer of paint on the hull.