perp and paint my aluminum bottom and it looked great! I got as far as Santiago and while on the beach getting some water and sand out I noticed a spot lifting. The spot was about the size of a basketball. 20 minutes later I had peeled ALL of the paint off in big sheets. You could see that the paint stuck to the primer just fine. :-0 They had rough sanded the bottom and washed it with some kind of acid prep but the primer still didn't stick worth a hoot. I went back to a fiberglass bottom as soon as we got back to San Diego. We're heading back down in November and we'll see how this one does. The last two aluminum ones didn't work out well at all. This is the third dinghy in four years. Cruising is tough on dinghies but they should last longer then that.