Oh, the fair amount of micro-fun one can have building a boat.

I'm making good progress sanding the hull exterior over the last few days ... I'm ready, now, to do just a bit of epoxy touch-up where I sanded over-enthusiastically (as below). You'll also see another item I could address if I had the strength of character: little dings along the edge of the lowest strake, where it meets (and slightly protrudes from) the bottom panel.

The hull is upside down now, so these little dings show at upper left below.

Now, sanding has smoothed these dings out since I shot this photo, so now it just looks like a not-quite straight edge. In the boat-building world, the edge would be described as not fair -- "fair" meaning smoothly curved.

"Fairing" is the practice of making edges like these smoothly curved again. In this style of boat-building, it's usually done by thickening epoxy with something called micro-balloons. No, I did not make this up. When one thickens epoxy with this stuff, it's pretty easy to sand after it cures -- very different from the thickeners which I have been using, which help epoxy to cure into the stuff used to make the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey, capable of outlasting time itself.

A good person would, at this point, mortgage his house (or terrier) to purchase some micro-balloons and fair these edges. I have not yet decided if I'm going to be that good. History suggests I won't. Besides, it's easy to think it's the bottom of the hull. it's going to get dinged regularly.

Since I have to do a little touch-up here and there anyway (see light spot in photo above), I might decide to thicken a little of the goo with the thickeners I have, and try to fill in these dings. Then I will have to sand them again, of course, and it's almost a certainty that in so doing I will go through the epoxy in some nearby spot and have to touch-up AGAIN.

This is the nature of doing this work. I think experienced builders would make fewer of these errors, but the experience I have accumulated so far is definitely not enough.

Tonight or tomorrow I'll do my touch up. A couple of days later I'll sand it smooth, ever so gently.

And then it will be time to mask, prime and paint the hull. I can hardly contain my excitement.