Portland Area Yards

Hi,

My daughter will be taking the San Juan 26 that was my joy for many years down to Portland this summer. they would like to leave it in the water for the season and put it on the trailer only in the winter. Se is a keel- centerboarder that is still a "virgin". She has never had bottom paint applied. She was awl-gripped three years ago.

Does anyone have suggestions as to good marina and a good yard to have the bottom paint applied? She sits on a trailer now so is easy to take to any yard. Also, what type of paint is best for the Columbia?

Bob Morrison
Terra Nova

Choices and options

There are several good yards in the central part of our boating area. I have had good work done at Danish Marine and also at Schooner Creek Boat Works.
Note that only the later one, SCBW, allows DIY.

Either yard can perform good quality work, and AFAIK bottom painting is quoted on $ per foot of boat basis, so quotes usually pretty close, from one yard to another.
I used to apply VC17 on our prior boat for a decade here.
We now use Trinidad SR on our larger boat. Lots of good choices out there and the yard can advise what they use that works well for the type of use on your boat.

Loren

I have also used Danish Marine. There are several others in the Portland Area in addition to SCBW and Danish. I have used Rocky Point Marina for a previous boat, and there is also Multnomah Yacht Harbor. If you want DIY, you could try Tomahawk Boat Works (they use Danish for haulouts).

I applied Trinidad SR three years ago and it is still in good shape. I will probably have new bottom paint done next year.

Doug

Tomahawk Boat Works is just a yard, period. There used to be a professional boat repair business that leased space from them, same location, but they went under several years ago and I don't think anyone has replaced them.

If you want a situation where you can do work, and at the same time hire certain work that you don't want to do, the options are Schooner Creek, Rocky Pointe (who doesn't allow DIY unless they are doing work on the boat and has certain restrictions on DIY), and Dike Marine in Scappoose.

I haven't been particularly impressed with either of the yards that I've been to so far, so I will probably keep going down the list. I don't want to say anything strongly negative about anyone, since I lack points of comparison, and probably contributed to any misunderstandings myself. But I think it is fair to point out that the access road at Rocky Pointe might be a huge drawback for some people, depending on your boat and tow-rig. It is ludicrously steep and has a hairpin switchback in the middle. For me, the exit was seriously in doubt. It took three tries and a long running start, much faster than I liked, to get up. And I was burning rubber all the way. Fortunately, nobody was coming down at the exact time (I should have had two helpers, to run up and block traffic). At least it was a serious test of the rigging - (if the boat is going to fall off the trailer, it will fall off right here, before I get on the highway...)

I wouldn't want to haul a boat on that access road to Rocky Pointe. That said, a friend recently trucked a Catalina 34 out of there. I would have liked to see that.

Access issues aside, I have only had good experiences with them.

BTW: I believe (but I'm not positive) that the Schooner Creek Dude told me that they couldn't allow DIY bottom painting, due to liability issues. But they were offering a (boat show) special on haul & paint.

toddster said:

BTW: I believe (but I'm not positive) that the Schooner Creek Dude told me that they couldn't allow DIY bottom painting, due to liability issues. But they were offering a (boat show) special on haul & paint.

Click to expand...

They won't let our club sand the bottom of our dredge (they will do the work) but will allow us to paint it.

Must be a recent change because a year ago they were going to let a couple from our club do their entire bottom job there.

There was some recent flap on here about certain SoCal DIY yards not allowing bottom sanding any longer. Could be a trend we will so more and more of.