Slow December days

Work on Perseverance has slowed to a crawl during the holiday season. Mostly I've been painting... little by little. I've also been filling in gaps here and there that I didn't see until I'd painted primer on them. 

Slowly but surely, I'm narrowing the tasks down until it will be time to install the deck. I don't foresee that happening until January (at least). But, I'm in no real hurry at the moment.

I've finished encapsulating the rear seat with epoxy. It's ready to be installed permanently, but I'm not quite ready to do that yet. So, in these photos, it's just sitting there.

I've drilled the holes for the oarlocks (Perko — American made!), and screwed them into place. I wanted to do this before I finish painting the sheers. For now, I've taken them back off so that I can paint.... and fill in more gaps, as it turns out.

I've had to do a little touch-up painting, such as these spots on the transom where the grey primer is showing.

This photo is actually of what you're not seeing: little gaps and gouges in the starboard sheer that I filled in with thickened epoxy. The gaps are in-between the plywood planking and the topmost portion of the sheer. The gouge was a small spot where the inner lamination of the sheer (Southern Yellow Pine) was lower than the outer lamination.

I also had to fill in a couple of spots on top of the transom. Here, I've added primer (AquaGuard 190) on top of the epoxy "filling." Next will be added coats of the Sea Foam Green.

AquaGuard 190 primer and AquaGloss Sea Foam Green on the port sheer.

When I was coating the underside of the sheer with epoxy, I'd taped off the inner part of the plywood planking (because it was already painted) with blue painter's tape. The epoxy basically impregnated the tape, and it's not gonna come off without a fight. So, I decided to just paint over it. Here's the first coat on the port side.

A nice note on the System Three WR-LPU paint: I had added all the remaining cross linker to the rest of the paint a couple of months ago, when I was painting the inside of the hull. I had concerns that this might have made the rest of the paint solidify in the can in the time since. But, so far, it has not.

Permanently-attached blue tape on the starboard side. I'll be painting over this, too.

This photo is just to illustrate how I copied the shape for the quarter knees from the transom knees. The original plans call for a simple triangular piece here, but I wanted the classic curve.

Last, but not least, here is another pesky gap between the planking and the sheer that was all but invisible until I added the primer. I'll fill this in with thickened epoxy whenever I attach the rear thwart — I'm running very low on epoxy & don't want to waste any more than necessary.