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I’ve painted the first few rectangles. It wasn’t me who chose the colours for these rectangles, but a whole bunch of friends and family.
I don’t really have time for all this work, but my friends paid to be allowed to choose the colours, so I’ve got no choice.

The first of the new colours: blue

And a bit of pink as well

It’s about 34 degrees in my studio. So one major challenge is making sure I don’t let any sweat drip into the paint.

Did you guess right? The next colour was purple!

The shade of purple I chose goes really well with the yellow.

Next time, we’ll be adding two new colours at once.

It’s getting colourful!
I’ve started painting the fuselage. Just a few yellow sections to start with, to see how it goes.
Can you guess what the next colour will be?

After filling and sanding, the whole deck had to be coated with epoxy. There are two reasons for this: firstly, to make the filler harder (it absorbs some of the resin), and secondly, to provide a good base for the paint.

With the help of my friends Oli (#273) and Fabian (#208), I applied the epoxy. It’s much easier with two people: one mixes the resin, the other applies the coat.

And yes, of course this Epody layer needs to be sanded down. This is (hopefully) the last time sanding.

The boat looks quite boring, all in one colour. But that will soon change!

At last, all the surfaces have been laminated with fibreglass. The next step is to achieve a smooth finish.
Just as with the underside of the boat, this means: filling, sanding, filling again, sanding again…

Bit by bit, I carried on with the laminating. You can see clearly in this photo how I created an overlap at each edge with the adjacent section.

The transom was a bit trickier. I laminated it in two stages: first the strip around the top, then the whole area below it the next day.

And finally, the last section: the entrance bulkhead!

Now there isn’t a single section left on the entire hull with less than 600 g/m² of fibreglass on it!

Before I could finish laminating the deck, I had to finish building the observation pod. The roof on my pod looks a bit different from others. I’m planning a flat compartment where my dodger will be stored.

Once I’d laminated the deck all the way round, I moved on to the pod itself. I laminate section by section, with a wide overlap, so that the edges are further reinforced.

I’ve also started laminating the cockpit. As with the observation pod, I laminate section by section, with an overlap.

Before continuing with the lamination of the deck, I began work on the observation pod (the little house on the deck).

Laminating, as I do it, in detail:
1. Coat the wood with a thin layer of epoxy and sand it down well. This saturates the wood and prevents it from absorbing the resin from the laminate during lamination.

2. Laminate all edges and panel transitions with glass strips. I used wider strips than required so that I could sand down the edges a little.

3. Dry fit the glass fabric. I secured the piece at the rear edge with a little tape so that I could later put it back in the right place.

4. Cover all areas that should not be covered with epoxy.

5. Roll the fibreglass fabric back. Now we are ready for the resin.

6. Apply a thick layer of epoxy and roll the fibreglass fabric on top of it. With a roller press it into the epoxy. My fibreglass fabric is quite thick, so it needs more resin. But before I apply the second layer of resin, I take a short break until the first layer is sticky. This fixes the glass in place and prevents it from shifting when the second layer is applied.

7. Apply the second coat of epoxy and cover everything with peel ply. Peel ply should be applied without wrinkles. This is much easier to do with several small pieces than with one large piece.

After more than two weeks of preparation, I was finally able to glue the rest of the deck in place. The preparation mainly consisted of painting the interior. This is easier and less unpleasant in an open space. I also painted the underside of the deck panels, which is much easier to do on a table than from underneath after installation.

A friend helped me with the gluing. Before gluing, we screwed handles onto the panels so that we could lift and position them without smearing epoxy everywhere.

I am very happy with the result; everything went according to plan.

A short break after work to admire the result…

As in the front part of the boat, the wooden areas here will also be painted blue.

As with the underside of the hull, I first had to laminate fibreglass strips over all the edges. This went much better than on the underside.

I also used biax fabric instead of woven fibreglass for the deck. I found a 610 gram fabric that allowed me to achieve the required thickness in one go.

As always, I covered everything with a layer of peel-ply at the end.