So since the last posting on the new paint job, I have come a long way…. and learned quite a bit. While shopping for paint to use, I quickly found that automotive paint for hobby use is VERY expensive. I am not sure at this point if it would have looked better or not, but I know it would have cost more than the current solution.
I started sanding down the hull up to 400 grit to make sure everything was smooth. Then a little acetone to make sure it was perfectly clean for the primer shot. “hrm, that is strange, why is all the white gelcoat coming off….” Well, it seems as though there were 3 MORE layers of paint under what I though was the gelcoat layer. I found some of the old infamous red and green primer that Spot is known for and a few coats of some very hard white paint. I got 99% of that off with a gallon of acetone and quite a few rolls of towels. Eventually I got down to the actual white gelcoat and sanded it smooth for the primer layer.
I have chosen good ol’ Krylon paints for painting the hull, part for the cost (~$40 instead of $150+) and part for the ease of repairs later. I masked off the entire top deck so that it would not get any overspray as well as packing the rudder tube so no overspray would enter the brass tube and cause problems. I sprayed the gray primer on the hull in a nice few thick coatings so I could sand out the imperfections later. After sanding it, washing the hull, and wiping it down with an oil and grease wash, I shot one more thin layer over the hull that I could wet sand. I sanded the last layer down with 600 grit paper, then washed, and cleaned the surface.
Now came the fun part. I used what is called “Frisket” for masking off my circles. It is used for airbrush masking and has very fine lines since it is so thin. The plan was to mask the circles off, then shoot black over the entire hull, then mask the entire hull EXCEPT for the circles and paint them orange. The reason I chose this sequence would be to save the layers of paint under the black so that I would not have an uneven surface where the paint was not built up. This would be a mistake! I sure hope the performance is worth the extra effort that I have had to put into the hull to save a few 1/2mm of paint on the hull 
After shooting the black down over the entire hull, I let it dry for a day with a heater running in the paint booth. Then I pealed the frisket off and revealed the gray primer circles and black hull. Then I painstakingly used 1/8″ fine line plastic tape to mask around every circle, then 1/4″ tape around that, then 1/2″ tape around that….. you get the picture. Masking circles is a PAIN.
Then came the orange layers. The orange did not spray on near as well as the black. I am not sure if it is the color pigments that are heavier or what, but the black shot on perfectly, and the orange not so much. I almost immediately started getting runs in thin layers of paint. I had to slow down the layering process to keep the paint from almost running off the boat everytime. Letting the paint dry 2 hours in between thin mistings of orange helped but dragged out the process. I eventually layered up the paint, and let it dry under a heat lamp for 2 days. Then sanded out some of the runs with wet 600 paper. Then misted over the orange to cover a little better.
Saturday, I started taking off the masking covering the hull, and I found a primered circle that I had some how covered up while I was masking the bottom….(I don’t have a picture of the lone circle cause I was so pissed)……. 
SO I taped up the hull except for 1 tiny 2″ circle and painted on some more orange.
