Spent the first part of the morning fixing the area in the keel taping that had WAY too many bubbles from trying to tape while still on its side.

Once everything was ground out, I smoothed everything over with cab-o-sil where needed and taped using 6″ tape instead of the size called for

This set up pretty quick because of the weather, so the float was taken outside and placed in a position to start working on the keel. After much time with the longboard and electric sander, we made the executive decision to purchase a random orbital sander to take down the bogged areas quicker.

I should mention that for the past few weeks looking at things, we didn’t have much faith in being able to get the keel shape to the full-size templates that Ian provides. After spending about an hour or two with the new sander and longboard, suddenly the templates we cut out magically fit in the areas they were supposed to!

Needless to say, this was quite the motivation boost. We finished shaping the keel the rest of the way and had one area that went down to the laminate (the plans said it might and just to put extra layer inside). Once the keel was shaped, it was the motivation needed to finish cleaning things up and glue the deck on.

We added weights to try and keep the bond as close to the flange as possible. The good part, this was done a day ahead of when I originally planned; the bad part, in the morning we noticed that some areas weren’t weighted down enough and had sprung up, leaving the hardened version of what gum looks like when you step on it 🙁 The plan is to cut these spikes away, bog and use screws to hold the deck down.

Here’s a picture of things in the morning, before trimming and sanding.

Time spent: 5 hours