Motoko's hull renovation is progressing

It was high time to take care of things.
Years of accumulated, ablative bottom paint together with weathered freeboard and deck made her look looked ugly. She deserves better care for the beauty she is.

The plan is to remove all paint from the bottom, up to gelcoat. This way I will also inspect if there are any signs of osmosis. Once on gelcoat level I will apply epoxy shielding - I've chosen Hempel system.

Then I will move to deck - remove all old paint up to the primer (or deeper), repair cracks in some spots with fibreglass matt and epoxy and paint it with anti-slip paint.
If I manage timewise I would also paint her freeboards - but that could wait till next winter.

Right now we are in my boathouse and I'm done with removing old bottom paint.
It is toxic stuff so ground is covered with plastic so that I can collect all debris and leave it in återvinningscentral.
I tried with success the old method of dissolving paint with caustic soda (NaOH). You simply dissolve NaOH in wallpaper glue (water based) and then "paint" your boat's bottom with that. After 40 minutes remove the whole thing with water at high-pressure.
Just be warned: NaOH can burn your skin and eyes so extra caution is necessary!
I was full-dressed in protective clothes with face and head totally covered. No bare skin is allowed during this procedure - heavy-rubber gloves are a must.

After first such treatment the most of black bottom paint was removed up to the primer level (which was red as I discovered). I've repeated the process but that gave no better results - not much was removed further.
The whole procedure took me around 2 hours but I estimate that it saved me weeks of daunting job of mechanically removing toxic and glue-like paint.

Now the bottom is mostly red and the paint sits good. I could paint epoxy directly on it but I've decided to clean her all the way to gelcoat so as to be sure epoxy becomes well bonded to the boat.

I'm now in the beginning of sanding her down to gelcoat, which happens to be blue! It was probably cheaper to get this colour when she was built - and she was to be painted anyway so why not?