Wednesday 2 May 2007

No photo finish


The interior was painted last week. There are no photos, I forgot to take them before I turned the hull and although I’ve turned the boat upright several times since then, to show admirers the insides, it hasn’t jogged my memory sufficiently to reach for the camera. It maybe a subconscious reaction of mine: I am not very happy with the finish.

Such is the nature of learning that no sooner have I completed a task—and it is irrevocably cemented in epoxy—than a better way of doing it occurs to me or, with the slow dawning of the bleeding obvious, all that I’ve read, the advice, the dos and don’ts, swims into focus.

I am kicking myself over those sagged fillets, the unfeathered tape and the messy corners. Naively I thought the paint would cover up the worst, but actually it has made the lumps, bumps and craters stand out even more, but then I’d read about that too.

I have been over compensating on the exterior. But just when the fairing looked like it might go on for ever I stopped and applied a coat of primer.

It doesn’t look marvellous in the photo. The hull was very hot, the sun was beating down and the primer was drying even as I rolled it on. I’ve read about that somewhere too.

Tomorrow’s coat will be applied to a cool hull in the shade of the olive tree.

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