roll me another one

Painted Spartina's deck today, my first time ever of using a roller to paint.  Now I wonder why I had ever bothered with a brush.  The rolling the paint on was much faster, more efficient with the paint and just all around easier to do.

I had heard and read that high density foam rollers were the way to go.  I looked at the rollers at West Marine and I looked at the rollers at the hardware store.  The only different I could see was the color green.  Green for the color at WM, as opposed to the white at the hardware store.  And green for the additional money that rollers cost at WM.  I went with the white, cheaper hardware store version.  They seemed to work fine.

At the hardware store I did spend a couple of extra bucks on the green masking tape you see on the port side below.  It supposedly sticks better, gives a crisper edge to the paint.  It did not stick very well at all, so I switched back to an old roll of blue masking tape which seemed to grip the rub rails a little better.

Photographs do lie, I have heard, and the finish is not as nice as it looks in the photograph above.  But it stays with my boat building motif - well, the motif for my life really - of rough around the edges. I'll take that and be happy with it.

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I stood in line for the self service stand at the post office this morning.  Everyone else had christmas packages for family and friends to drop in the box.  I had two boxes - the main in one and mizzen and jib in the other - to send off to Stuart at Dabbler Sails.  

I've been having an interesting, enjoyable and, for me, educational email discussion with Stuart about the new sails.  I'm getting a level of service I never expected, and very much appreciate it.

steve