Photographs by Nancy Bourne Haley
Author Mark Haley cuts in the hull-to-trunk-cabin trim on his 1941 Alden sloop, SYMRA. Mark has learned to mostly dispense with masking tape in his annual paint-maintenance regimen. As his skill has developed over the years, this practice has saved him much time, and yielded better results than he could achieve with tape.
SYMRA is a classic wooden sloop designed by John Alden and built by the Edison Vocational School in Seattle, Washington. She was launched in 1941, and has been in my family for 66 years.
When I took over her stewardship from my father in 1974, I soon grew extremely frustrated with the quality of the paint lines I was achieving with masking tape. Unless that 1970s-vintage tape was applied with enough pressure, paint would seep under its edge and leave a mess; tape applied with enough pressure to prevent seepage often pulled away small pieces of the underlying freshly applied topside enamel when the tape was removed.
In those days I was masking both the boot top and covestripe. After those early disastrous experiences, it was easy to jettison the accenting covestripe and leave the cove the same shade of white as the hull. SYMRA has relatively low freeboard, and didn’t need this accenting element. But I wanted to keep the boot top, and this presented a different problem.
I solved the boot top problem by scribing in its lines and painting freehand—that is, without masking—to these scribed lines. In the heyday of wooden yachts, this was actually the standard approach to painting waterlines (see sidebar). It yields a line that’s more eye-pleasing, and more repeatable, than a taped one.
Emboldened by my newly developed skill at painting without tape, I soon learned how to paint the enamel surfaces above decks—the cabin sides and trim—without resorting to tape. I now paint everything without tape except for the line where the paint of the cabintop meets the varnished teak trim; for this line, I use automotive detailing tape. Practice has made me a better painter. But one must start somewhere, so here are some fundamental concepts I’ve learned over the years.
Last May, SYMRA needed new paint on the cabin sides. That project serves as an example of how I prepare her for painting, and what can be done without tape.