Soda blast or just scrape and paint

[jjjtronics]

I just went through that last month, same question, lots of thinking. Ended up doing it myself. For advise, I called an old friend who is a fisherman from the local village, he told me that the way they do it ( cheap way ) is to lift the boat on the trailer on one side, paint that side, let dry, then lift the other side and the same. It was a liitle dificult to get around the trailer beams to scrub or paint, but it works. I scraped and sanded where needed. After a good hand scrub with pure Dawn dish soap, let dry for two days, and painted with ABLATIVE.
Results, looks good from a distance, not very smooth, but spend little money. $85.00 for a gallon of paint and one 4" brush which I saved still. Boat has been in the water for a month, and I love it, money saved is on my belly and in the tank. I will not EVER paint with anything but ablative. IT just makes a lot of sense. Maybe there are reasons for using non ablative, but in my case, not.
What is under water does not matter if its so smooth. I don`t know how much drag it can induce, but I never go fast anyways.