Sailing With Alliance

On Monday I went out to the Alberg not really knowing what I would work on.  We are at this point where there are 20 projects going on at once but none of them need immediate attention.  I decided that it was a beautiful day so working on the deck sounded like a good idea.   The last time I was working on this section of the deck the winter cover was still on and it was difficult to say the least!  You can catch up with all that HERE if you missed it.

Working without the winter cover, in the sun and warmth, was so nice!  The first layer of fiberglass was down but had a couple small bubbles that I missed in the dark under the cover.  I ground these out first and then spent what seemed like an eternity laboriously sanding the entire thing down:

After I could feel my hands again I wiped everything down with a generous amount of acetone and got all the fiberglass and epoxy supplies out.  I decided to build up the rest of the layers in one go so I cut a couple different widths of fiberglass in long strips.  These were then epoxied down with the wider strips on the bottom and the little strips on the top to make a somewhat level surface with the rest of the deck.  I then covered them with release cloth and spread out all the bubbles and made sure everything was setting up evenly.

The fiberglassing probably only took an hour or so – it went really well.  The sanding was the “work” that had to be done and I imagine I sanded for a good hour and a half.   You can see the foredeck in the last picture.  It is almost completely fair now and ready for a final sanding and paint.  I imagine I will wait a while for the painting though.  Too much messy work yet to be completed!