The deck of my Formosa 46 sailboat was in need of a paint job. I had never painted a deck before, and I had never put non-skid on the deck surface. So. I decided that I would experiment with the aft deck only. The theory was that, no matter how bad it turned out, I could always sand it off and do it over. I decided to use Interlux Perfection, a 2-part epoxy paint, with a single initial coating of Interlux Pre-Kote primer.

Step 1 was to sand, and then fill and smooth (or "fair"), the fiberglass deck. I didn't do a first class job of filling in all the low spots. It looked fine to me UNTIL the primer coat of paint was put on. At that point, the non-first-class areas all became painfully obvious. Another not-so-first-class move was to leave the deck hardware in place, and paint around it. This isn't a very good way to do it, but my time was limited. This picture shows the deck all sanded and faired, just before the primer coat was put on.

The primer coat is shown below. Next will be 3 top-coats. I do light sanding in between all these coats. One of the challenges is dealing with the glare of a white deck. If you are putting on the next coat during the day, the glare will tend to hide spots that you missed (I roll on the paint, then smooth it with a brush). Later in the day, when the sun gets low, the glare goes away and all the little spots you missed become obvious. Very frustrating.

After the 3rd top-coat, I used blue tape to mask off the edges of the deck. I then put on a 4th coat of paint. While it was still wet, I sprinkled beach sand on the paint to create a non-skid surface. The sand created a good non-skid surface, but the end product will be a little like sandpaper; not very bare-foot friendly, and not something you would want to fall on with bare skin. The picture below shows the deck after the sand had been sprinkled on.

On top of the "sand non-skid", I put on 2 more coats of paint to seal the sand non-skid to the deck. For these coats, I don't do any sanding in between the non-skid coats. Next summer, I'll repeat the same process to more sections of the deck until I eventually get the whole deck repainted. I also need to paint the mast next summer, but I think I'll skip the non-skid on the mast.