Flipped!

Two coats of red on the topsides now:

Not ideal. The epoxy didn't come out as smooth as wanted, and it wasn't very sandable, so it's a bit rough. It is what it is. Definitely not popped out of a mold!

Painted red!

Don't know why I put the exclamation mark on the post title.

Anyway, yes, first coat of red paint on the topsides:

So the bottom and bilge planks have three coats of semi-gloss white, the topsides two white and now one red. One more coat of red to go. I think I have just enough red paint left over from the kayak.

On the "bench" on the right in the photo below are some of the bits and pieces that are also getting painted, since the weather has warmed somewhat. It helps to be up by the roof of an uninsulated building on a sunny day—until it gets too hot in the summer!

On the bench, from right to left: aft hatch cover, lower leeboard guard, rudder head, upper leeboard guard (the slot). Then it's paint and painting stuff, with the foam cache behind it.

First exterior paint

John suggested sealing the outside of the hull with epoxy rather than polyester resin, so I decided to use WEST Special Clear hardener with John's 105 resin.

I like the result:

The yard and the boom are beside the boat. I've started putting what hopefully will be many coats of Helmsman spar varnish on them.

Then, today, the big day of first paint!

I'm using Petit Easypoxy semi-gloss white. The topside plank will be Interlux Brightside glossy red, same as the last two boats.

The plan is to put another coat of white on the sides before the red goes on. I believe that a colour painted over white is more brilliant, and I like a brilliant red. The rest of the white might be three coats total.

More bottom

Some advice for a boat builder (and note to self):

Never use glass mat on the outside of your boat if you want it smooth, unless you're a sucker for punishment! 👊

My second mistake was to use unwaxed resin. Third mistake was to not just follow up with waxed resin simple, to fill in the low spots. Instead, I followed up with waxed resin with microballoons in it, which didn't settle into the low spots and had to be sanded. 

After a lot of sanding and throwing out sandpaper that was gummed up by the unwaxed resin that I sanded into, I then used Polyfair to fill in the low spots. More sanding produced a fairly even surface, but nothing like cloth would have.

I should have instead used epoxy and glass fabric, which lies flat and smooth. The rationale for the mat was that it supposedly sticks to wood better than fabric with polyester resin. Epoxy sticks better, and woven fabric makes it stronger.

So I ended up putting a coat of epoxy on top of the whole mess:

It'll be a pretty durable bottom, anyway, and my arms are much stronger from all the sanding. 💪

Glassing the bottom

I put a layer of 2" glass tape on top of a layer of 3" tape over all of the outer seams. Then I put a layer of 1-oz glass mat on the bottom. The tape has a rough selvedge on one side that must be sanded off; the 2" stuff was the worst.

I put Polyfair (a polyester fairing compound) over the edges of the tape, to blend them into the sides.

In the above photo, I've faired the starboard side tape edges but not the port side yet.

Did I mention that I got a space at the CBSA? It just needs a boat in it now! Hopefully the temperatures will rise enough to start painting soon. Current highs are around 6ºC, lows around 0.