The red paint blues

First, if you ever think of painting a boat red, get some beer, sit down and drink it till the thought does away. Red paint ain't great. Please note these pictures show an unsanded, rolled surface! It will not look like this when done.

Here are my new rules about red latex paint:

1. Do not use red paint
2. If you are reading this item this refer to rule one
3. Red paint requires many more coats than any other color to reach the state where it is even worth sanding
4. Floetrol is worth it's weight in gold. It makes red latex paint actually behave somewhat like other paints. Without the Floetrol red latex paint is more like applying gravel-enhanced plaster with a dirty trowel
5. Never let anyone see the first two coats of red paint. It is embarrassing and makes you look like you finger painted to get a tie-dyed effect
6. Primer should be absolutely pre-tinted. The best recommendations I've seen are to tint the primer a medium to dark gray. Any light colored areas underneath red paint will show through four layers of red paint. My pink tinting wasn't bad, but it needs to be absolutely uniform or the red paint (which uses a transparent jewel tone paint tint) shows EVERYTHING. If I were doing this again I would use a dark gray tinted unsanded primer layer underneath the red. Unsanded because a consistent color base makes the red look far better than an uneven color base.
7. Latex paints surface dry in minutes, but take 48 to 72 hours to cure enough for sanding. Don't bother trying to seriously sand without a 48 hour delay to cure, or you are asking for trouble
8. I didn't bother spraying the red paint for the first few coats, it would not have been worth the effort. I rolled it on with a foam roller. I figured I should keep on putting on paint till at least the color was consistent and worth sanding before I bothered to spray.
9. The foam roller - Floetrol enhanced red paint had an alarming tendency to show a lot of bubbles on first pass rolling. Subsequent re-rolling of the area with less and less pressure on the roller reaches the point where the bubbles are eliminated, but the first few times you put paint of the boat are scary
10. Nap rollers are tools of the devil and should not be used with red paint unless you are trying to call a demon up from hell
11. Faith is required to work with red paint
12. Most of the people in paint departments at building centers don't know what they are doing from experience - they've sat through seminars, but haven't actually done anything. If I had talked to someone who had actually painted red latex with a good quality finish result they would have told me about the dark gray primer idea. The guy I talked to said my "tint it pink" idea was the right thing to do. Learn from my experience!

I'm currently waiting through a curing delay for 48 hours so I'll report on the next step - spraying after I sand. I've got lots of other jobs to do in the mean time. In this second photo you can see the effects of Thomas learning how to spray paint closet doors on the driveway. He keeps forgetting to release the trigger at the end of the paint pass. No serious harm done!

Put the boat in the driveway to have the sun help the cure process. It's got to be better than sitting in a dark garage.