Raising the Waterline

Waterline raised

Sailboats are pretty.  Think about it.  They are often used as scenery in movies, pictures, calendars, condo and resort properties and event spaces like weddings…..”Our daughter got married at The Cotillion Ballroom near the marina with all the sailboats in the background.”  When searching for your own sailboat, looks is an important factor.  Is she appealing to the eye?  To that specifically, many naval architects and boat builders put stripes on the side of the boat.  Usually one at the top, just under the toe rail and then a few near the waterline.  On sv Honey Ryder we have that exact configuration:  one 2 inch green stripe under our toe rail and then three at the waterline.  Along the waterline it goes -  bottom paint, 1 inch break of gel coat, 2 inch green stripe, break of 1 inch gel coat and then another 2 inch green stripe which ends up looking like 6 stripes total of green and ivory. 

The striping is eye catching but a pain in the ass.  Well, not all of it, but bottom 1 inch stripe of ivory gel coat.  It ends up dirty / gross because it is exposed to the water through wind, swell, current and such at anchor and while sailing.  The slime happens because it is straight gel coat, no bottom paint. 

During the season we try to keep the bottom clean on a regular basis by scrubbing it lightly with a nylon scour pad or plastic scraper to keep any growth from becoming permanent.  This troublesome 1 inches of gel coat takes extra attention and time.  Consequently, it looks like hell come mid to late season. 

I had finally had it.  “Why don’t we raise the waterline?  Get rid of this 1 inch gel coat stripe all together.  Bingo!  Problem solved." Tom agreed.  When we hauled out this hurricane season to do the bottom, that is exactly what we did, raised the waterline. 

For you non-boaters, raising the waterline simply means you move the edge / line of the bottom paint up.  We painted over the 1 inch gel coat strip and now it is bottom paint.  This is usually only done when a boat is overloaded and thus sits lower in the water, causing the natural waterline to be higher than the intended one.  This is NOT the case on sv Honey Ryder.  While at times it seems like we have too much stuff inside the boat, our waterline was not stressing.  In fact, when she sits in the water in flat, calm conditions, we don’t even come close to the top to the waterline.  However, most anchorages have a little wave action of some sort.  We rock side to side at anchor. 

Moving the waterline up is not hard but not as simple as slapping some paint on there.  The new waterline had to be taped off.  Given it would now come up to the 2 inch green stripe, it had to be tapped off very carefully aka exact.  Anything EXACT is done by Cap10 Tom.  He is Mr Exact.  I am NOT Mrs Exact.  Then the gel coat had to be super clean with acid to remove any and all dirt and such.  Then it was lightly sanded to open up the gel coat surface so it would except the epoxy primer and bottom paint, then finally wiped down to remove the sanding bits. 

When we rolled the bottom, this new area was included.  On the starboard side, it splits two thru hulls exactly in half.  That was a bit odd but we taped those off at exactly the halfway and it looks fine. 

In fact, the whole thing looks great.  We should have done this from the start.  The remaining stripes are still eye catching.  The only difference is there isn’t a dirty, slimy gel coat strip any longer.  Very happy with the results. 

As I look around at other cruising boats, it seems nearly all have the decorative configuration we had and all of their gel coat stripes are filthy like ours used to be.  I have to wonder what the builders were thinking.  Obviously, they never had to keep their boats clean for a whole season in the tropics.  Grrrrr.  And I wonder why more cruisers haven’t raised their waterline to eliminate this?  I have spotted a few boats that have.  They seem to be world cruisers who have made extensive changes to their boats based on thousands and thousands of tried and true sea miles.  Hum?  I wonder what else we can learn from looking closer at these hardy, experienced boats?