HI Folks:
I've just bought myself a DS1 (#37, see post in DS1 section), which badly needs a good sanding and new paint. Please indulge me in a maybe silly question.....
I'd planned to paint the deck and cockpit white, but one of my sailing buddies gave me a short lecture about the horrors of our North Carolina sunshine on blinding white decks, and then gifted me a lovely quart of grey Pettit one-part topsides paint. While he's right about how strong our sun is, I really don't want battleship grey decks. But bilge paint? Now we're talking. A quart should do me quite well for painting everything below the seats and the floor of the cuddy, and even the centerboard. I'm going to trailer-sailer my boat, drain it out after every sail, so no worries about growth on the topsides paint, even used in what's nominally the bilges.
My only question is thinning the paint. Normally, if I was using topsides pain on the hull, I'd thin it a bit to help me roll and tip. Here, I'm just rolling it into bilges, and a quart is enough for a coat or two (and I have floorboards), do I need to thin it? But my buddy was pretty adamant about me using Pettit Thinners... besides the expense, I was hoping to paint this weekend and don't have the time to get it. OTOH, what if I just use mineral spirits from the local big-boxes? Anyway, comments and thoughts would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Tom