First Coat of Epoxy

Moving right along! I got the first coat of epoxy on tonight, though not without some intrepidation.  

The first thing I tackled tonight was cutting out two runners. I'm concerned about tearing up the bottom of the boat, especially the edges of the first laps, when I land on the concrete ramp. I'm going to toughen up the bow, probably with a little extra fiberglass and also add two runners about mid-way back near the daggerboard slot. That should help.

I'll glue them on tomorrow, I guess. BTW: here's my setup with my belt sander. Makes for easy sanding of some small pieces like the runners.

Then I went about coating the hull with straight epoxy. I wanted to use the old stuff (11+ years old). It had crystalized a good bit. A few days ago I poured off the liquid part into an empty bottle using a strainer. Well, when I went to use it tonight, it had little crystals in it. Bummer! Can't use it. That certainly means I'll have to buy more epoxy and there goes my budget. Oh, well. 

That all took some time. I also contaminated my pump. I decided to do the bottom first. A few stray crystals wouldn't hurt there as much. Then my foam roller began to disintegrate and I was picking out little pieces of foam. Eventually I got it done. It took 3.5 hours all total for tonight's work. And the odor was strong. I put a fan at the vent to draw some fresh air in and even opened the door a little bit with the sub-freezing temps outside. 

I'm going to try and get a second on tomorrow and the third on Saturday. I'm thinking the next coats will go quicker.