Yesterday saw the last layer of the major repair glued in place. As you can see from all the photos and descriptions so far there has been nothing that is inherently difficult about the repair despite the extent of the damage, there has just been a lot of it.

The photos below show the progress of the last layer yesterday and the cleanup this morning.

The next stage is the filling and fairing. The epoxy between the strakes and in any other gaps is put in place level with the wood but it is drawn in to the wood until the epoxy cures and after it has cured you find that there are lots of depressions in the epoxy as a result. All these and any other depressions will need to be filled with epoxy and filler mix and then sanded back to a smooth surface. The epoxy will be put on to the hull in a line about 20cm long and then scraped along the hull using a long piece of plastic like a squeegee. The idea is that where the hull is fair, the epoxy is moved along the hull without leaving any behind but where there are depressions of any kind the epoxy is pushed into the hole resulting in a smooth surface.

Theoretically.

In practise the result still needs to be sanded smooth and the process repeated as many times as necessary to fill up all the depressions.

Tedious. My arms are going to ache!

All the strakes have been cut and are held in position by wood and staples.

A close up of some of the smaller pieces of retaining wood. The staples have been placed through the wood and into the hull and not the veneer. This is because the veneer is fragile in this state and removing the staples always causes damage.

Some of the larger retaining wooden pieces where the bend in the veneer means the one staple is not enough to hold the strake in place.

Some additional wood and staples were required to stop the strakes from rising away from the hull.

Another view of the cut strakes in position.

The strakes removed and stacked ready for the next stage.

There are 41 strakes in all ranging from quite small, about 2” in length to the longest around 40”.

Two and a half hours later all the strakes are glued to the hull using plastic staples to hold them tight to the hull whilst the epoxy cures.

Another view of the completed layer having cured.

Two hours later and the major bumps and excess epoxy have been removed using the surform.

From this angle you can see that there is still a lot of work to be done filling and fairing.