It occurred during the endless sanding tonight that maybe all the fairing work is what truly makes it the builder’s boat. The hands on every square inch of this 39′ beast, multiple times with big sanders, the “torture board”, hand sanding tools and finally just holding the damn paper until it gets too hot in your fingers. All the fiberglass, carbon and fancy epoxy buildups – now we sand that labor and money away. Could be frustrating, but instead tonight just maybe it’s more like sculpting – keep chipping away and we’ll find that pretty boat in the stone. Lots of chipping away, to be clear!

The deck area is close. Where other builders get it done in three fairing passes, we’ll apply coat #4 tomorrow to fix various blemishes and still unfair spots.

Marking the blemishes with a pencil as soon as they’re spotted in sanding is a big help later.

See the shiny (low) spots in the last photo of the companionway slider cover; that’s probably one more pass of putty then final sand before primer. A couple more days of spot fixing like this will have us ready on the whole boat down to the water line. Next up will be somehow lifting the hull a few inches off its big trolley and fairing the whole underwater area. A busy weekend ahead…