Bottom is finished and she is back outside ..... never to enter the garage again !

There were 5 coats of Interlux 2000E epoxy primer applied to the bottom after the final fairing was done.

I had to level the boat using a laser level to accurately mark the waterline. The general concensus was to raise the bottom paint by 50mm above the DWL. I decided to use another Interlux product called VC Performance epoxy for below the waterline. This is a product that can be wetsanded and burnished after applying the recommended number of coats. This process ended up be quite labour intensive but the result was amazing!

The bottom is now silky smooth and has a very hard durable finish. This is not an ablative bottom paint so it will be interesting to see how it holds up. I will be sailing this boat in Lake Superior so the water is quite cold and there hopefully won't be a lot of algae attaching to the hull. Time will tell on that one .....

In my last post you can see that the keel was bolted on from the bottom. This made the alignment really easy. I used my trusty laser level again to level the boat. Once that was done I proceeded to dry fit the rudder. A bed of thickened epoxy was laid down and the keel placed on top and the final vertical alignment was done before bolting the keel down with the 10 12mm bolts. BTW, the keel baseplate was.covered in clear packaging tape to prevent the keel from sticking to the boat permanently. After the epoxy set up, the keel was removed and the surface cleaned up before applying the 3M 4200 sealant to both the bolts and the baseplate.

The other photos show the boat being turned over for the last time in my yard before being set on the trailer. We needed to adjust the vertical stantions to suit the hull.

I have also added a vertical stantion on the centerline of the boat under Frame E just to provide some additional support.