Flaking bottom paint on 1 side, strip or repaint?

[FishFinder]

I'm planning my next round of boat work, I am trying to figure out what if anything my bottom needs. I don't know the last time the bottom was painted, and this is the first time I've dealt with boat bottom paint so any assistance would be appreciated! Basically the port side paint looks fine, but the starboard side paint is flaking in areas ... parts of it I can pull it off with my fingers. I attached pictures of flaking areas. Does the bottom need to be stripped completely, just stripped where it's flaking, or can I leave it be for another year or 2?

I'm just cruising around in this boat, I don't need a super smooth bottom or anything ... but I want to do the right thing while it's out of the water. The paint seemed to be doing an OK job of preventing growth over the summer.

Thank you!

[Joesaila]

Our 30' Morgan's bottom looked like that. We scraped and sanded till it was smooth. I believe the previous owner painted over the barrier coat and didn't prep it. We got buckets of chips...but when finished the new bottom paint took nicely. It was well worth doing.

[Sailormon6]

After many layers of bottom paint have accumulated on the bottom over many years, the paint begins to split and peel off in large chips. You can sand it smooth and paint over it, and the boat will sail reasonably well for awhile, but, within another year or two, after you put a couple more layers of paint on it, it'll start splitting and peeling again, because the underlying problem is the fact that you have too many layers of old paint on the boat. Unless you strip it off, you'll have a fairly big job every 2-3 years. If you strip it all off, down to the gelcoat, and start all over again, and use good ablative bottom paint, you can get to the point where you will, in all probability, never have to do that hard work on the boat again. The modern ablative paints gradually wear away, and don't accumulate like the old paints did.

So, your real choice is, do you want to do a fairly big job every 2-3 years, or do you want to do a really big job once? I chose the latter, and only wish I had done it sooner.

[Bene505]

For what findfisher has, wouldn't it be appropriate to simply sand the edges out of all the spots, and put an extra coat over those areas? It's not like the whole boat is covered with those spots. She's "flaking in areas" on the starboard side.

[camaraderie]

It is time to strip the bottom and start over. Easiest route would be to soda blast it and repaint. If there is an epoxy barrier coat...blast down to that...if not...consider barrier coating before putting on new bottom paint.
If you plan to sell the boat soon...sand the bad areas and put on another couple of coats...but you WILL be doing the same thing next year and be sloughing off chunks in the meantime of you don't sell.