Yeah, so I'm coating the hull exterior with epoxy. There was only the one coat on the fiberglass-covered bottom panel, and the #1 strake had no epoxy on it at all, on account of the manual had told me not to coat it until I put the fiberglass on the interior of that panel. I don't know why they didn't tell me to go ahead and coat the exterior side of that strake earlier. I'm sure they had their reasons. Actually, no, I'm not sure they did.
At any rate I have rolled on two coats over the entire exterior (not counting the transoms), and I put a third coat over the bottom panel (to make sure I have filled the fiberglass weave) and the #1 strake (to make sure it's good and sealed). All of this will get sanded, later, in order varnish & paint, but for now it just looks shiny.
Before I could apply these coats I faced my final opportunity to refine the little fillets between the strakes. My pal Dan consulted with me. How smooth and even must they be? What's the goal here? Dan answered that they had to be even and smooth enough for my sense of aesthetics and self esteem. Oh, great.
I ended up making a sanding block with just the right round-over on one side, then going over all these seams with 100-grit, then 220-grit sandpaper. I felt they looked kinda okay but not perfect but as good as I wanted them to, given the prospect of sanding all the way through the age of global warming before anything would look appreciably better.
This has worked out pretty well. Once I laid on the epoxy, I could see how these seams will look with varnish -- and they look surprisingly good. Also too, they'll be facing the water, or the trailer, and not me, most of the time, so they won't be excessively visible anyway. But I'll know how they look.
A recurring question has, uh, recurred. Should I paint the hull exterior, or most of it, or should I varnish it (they call this "leaving it bright")? I'm so unjustifiably pleased with the appearance of the hull that I'm reluctant to cover it with paint. Also too, I've read that paint is less forgiving than varnish when it comes to revealing surface imperfections, and oh I got plenty of those!
On the other hand, I think maintaining a varnished hull might be more work than maintaining a painted one. I actually don't know. I'll have to look it up. I'm sure I won't find more than eight or ten widely diverging opinions.
