Saturday and Sunday, August 17th and 18th, 2002
Saturday
I got a lot done this weekend on the Jumbo. Trying to make up time.
Saturday I did a bunch of sanding to roughen up all the epoxying I had done a couple of weeks ago. In a perfect world I would have gotten all the epoxying done in a matter of days so as to avoid all this silly sanding. If you put on a second or third coat of epoxy before it's completey cured (up to a day or two later) you get a chemical bond. But if you wait beyond a couple of days then the bond is mechanical and so you need to roughen up the cured epoxy so the new epoxy will stick. But it's not a perfect world and I have a day job and other things happening in my life in addition to boat building. So... I end up doing alot of sanding, which just so happens to be one of my least favorite things to do.
So after sanding my brains out yet again, I actually got the second bottom panel glassed up. It took me all of Saturday to fill, sand and glass. This time I applied the epoxy a different way. Normally, using Renn's method, I precoat a panel with unthickened epoxy, let it cure a tiny bit and then roll out the fiberglass, slowly squeegeeing it into place. Then I go back and add additional epoxy to thoroughly wet it out. This time I did it the way Bruce and Brian suggest. That is, I laid the glass down first on the bottom panel and then poured a puddle of epoxy in the center and squeegeed it on. I'm not sure I liked this process any better than the Renn method. And it wasn't any faster. Oh well, you live, you learn and have fun.
Sunday
Sunday started out kinda chilly with our normal fog covering most of the Bay Area. 55 degrees is too cold to epoxy so I busied myself by getting all my tools cleaned up and ready, then I did a final wipe down with a damp rag wet with an ammonia solution. Finally once it hit 60 I started coating the bottom. I put one coat of regular epoxy on the Port 
side of the bottom and while that was curing I put what was the third coat of epoxy on the starboard side. This coat was with Graphite as an additive. The Graphite will take the place of bottom paint. Since it makes the epoxy more durable and harder, and it also helps block UV light I can get away without painting. This is good. the less painting there is to do, the happier I'll be.
I ended up finishing the bottom coating today. There are a few rough spots that I'll sand and fill, and then touchup. But for the most part I'm ready to cut and fit the bottom strakes and spray rails.