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I have now bottom painted the virgin bottom of my 1988 Montauk. The boat is being sold to friends who will keep it in the water during the summer on Lopez Island, WA so it was not an option, it had to be done.
I really do not like the appearance of bottom paint on Whalers. Black is the best conventional color choice in my opinion but is quite a contrast and spoils the nice lines of the classic Whaler.

I decided I would pursue a color choice that could be accessible to almost anybody and choose Pettit Vivid anti-fouling bottom paint because it is the first bottom paint in some years to be offered in white which I thought might be a good base for custom tinting. It turned out to be quite a simple task.

I took a Benjamin Moore color fan-deck I have (I use Benjamin Moore paints almost exclusively in/on my buildings) and walked out to where my Revenge 25 was parked and held the color chips up against the hull. I conclude the closest color match within that fan deck was their "Clay Beige" (BM color # OC-11).

I bought a quart of latex wall paint and painted a large sample swatch on paper at home and let it dry. I then held the sample up against my Revenge to compare it with the Desert Tan. It was close but not quite perfect. I was also comparing flat latex sample to a shiny gel coat hull. I decided it would be close enough for my purposes.

I bought a gallon of Pettit Vivid in white after calling Pettit's customer service and asking if their product could be tinted using universal colorants to create an off-white from their white without affecting the properties of the paint. Customer Service assured me there would be no harm in tinting the paint with universal colorants.

So I took my gallon of white Vivid over to my local Benjamin Moore dealer and asked if they would please tint my gallon of white paint to "Clay Beige". As I suspected there was an immediate insistence from the counter help that they could not do that. I told them I would take responsibility if the paint did not turn out as planned and to please just pretend this was a gallon of Benjamin Moore base. "No." was the answer. When I persisted, the store manager was brought out. In no uncertain terms he told me they would not touch another manufacturer's product. (I actually agree with this stance on many practical and legal levels.)

Not to be dissuaded, I then asked them to sell me a gallon of oil base enamel tinted to "Clay Beige" but to omit the gallon of base and sell me only the tints. In the end we compromised. They sold me an empty quart paint can that happened to have the color formula of tints necessary for a gallon of alkyd white base. It cost less than $3 with tax.

This tint was intermixed with the gallon of white Pettit Vivid last week when the Montauk was bottom painted after receiving three coats of Interlux 2000E epoxy barrier coat. It came out quite well with the color only a little off. It may change as the boat sits in the salt water for a while but this "invisible bottom paint" should be pretty well camouflaged against the Desert Tan gel coat:

http://home.comcast.net/~tomwclark/De..._Paint.jpg