With family in town but the need to sustain forward progress, I stole a couple hours on Saturday to move the ball down the field. Biscuit's owner has selected his choice of color for the topsides and so the final prep for finish paint is in motion. I wanted to get some time on the refit, though limited given family in town, so I decided to focus on the cockpit. There were some gelcoat imperfections and old fastener holes that had been partially filled that I wanted to clean up. Also, I wanted to sand the last round of filler for the jib track fastener holes - which really should have been filled previously.

By hand and with the random orbital, I moves across all of the areas needing attention. I water-washed the amine blush from the jib track work first, and then came in with machine and hand work to bring down the high spots and create some "tooth" for a final application of fairing filler. The balance of the work was sanding around the old fastener penetrations as well as removing any crackling and flaking gelcoat from voids that needed to be filled.

I vacuumed the cockpit and solvent-washed the surfaces after the sanding work. Back in the shop, I prepared a small batch of TotalBoat's TotalFair epoxy-based fairing compound. This epoxy fairing compound is easy to sand and used as a final application prior to priming the surface. It is similar to West System's 410 micro-light fairing compound, which is added to a "clean" pot of epoxy resin. With a squeegee, I applied to the various spots within the cockpit, side deck and transom. Paint is on order and will be the next step in Biscuit's refit.

Total Hrs: 2