Boat Project

So we have decided to embark on a new project - we bought a 1976 Fiberform flybridge, 26' long.  Here's our first pic as we drove it home from down by San Diego:

We decided we would like to learn more about boats and originally were going to look for a boat at around 15K - 25K, but knowing that it was going to be a money pit at any level, decided that if we stuck below 10K for a project, we would feel OK if we ended up ditching the project. So when we saw this one on CL for 5K, we wnet out to look at it.  What an ugly boat! all kinds of work to be done, but the engine appears good, and it's all workable. So we bargained and ended up with $4200 as a sales price, and we drove it off.

We have a LOT of work to do on this, but we're excited to learn and get things fixed. I've started with the hull - the previous owners had painted a rubbery, horrible paint over lots of bad bondo, with an attempt to make it look better than it was.  Which was fine, but first job is getting that nasty white rubbery paint off, sand, and repaint.  

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I have half done-- and primed, ready for a background coat:

I've got a plan for this boat:  essentially, if we "restore" this boat, we'll end up with a 45+ year old boat that won't be worth a lot, but if we give it a theme and make it more a novelty, we may get someone who really wants it as a party theme boat. So we're going for a tiki theme. This is one idea for the hull paint job:

So that's the plan!  We are going to pretty much update every single part of this boat, learning about processes as we go. What we'd love to do is get a larger boat after retirement, with plans to live aboard and do the Grand Loop, so this is a learning project for us!  We so far are considering this as the name: