Fairing the Sportfisherman

Since my last post about Kevin Agee's 26ft sportfisherman project he has completed the glassing of the planing strakes and transom, after which the hull was ready for fairing to start. The fairing system chosen is from Alexseal Yacht Coatings.

Alexseal products for primers and fairing.

First to go onto the hull was 3 coats of high-build primer applied by roller. This formed the white base onto which the fairing/sanding layers were built up. It also gives a visual warning that sanding must not go any further into the coatings, instead more thickness must be built up to fill low spots before sanding can continue.

Next came a sprayed tan-coloured fairing coat that is sanded with longboards, removing high spots and revealing low spots that are missed by the sanding boards. The low spots are filled with a grey troweled putty, followed by more longboarding. Then the sequence of fairing coat, sanding, putty and sanding is repeated as many times as necessary until the hull is totally fair.

Sanding each time until the white primer is just starting to show on the original high spots ensures that there is not unnecessary build-up of fairing material on the hull. This is when the first fairing step showed its value. That first step was sanding out the bulk of unfairness from the raw wood strip surface before glassing the hull rather than adding filler to the low areas then glassing over them. Omitting that step would have increased the amount of fairing material on the hull, with resulting increase in weight.

This photo shows the bow after the first sprayed fairing coat. The white showing on the hull bottom is high-build primer. The edges of the fibreglass tapes on the bow show as ridges, even after feathering by sanding ahead of applying the high-build primer. The trowelled filler will be used in such areas to build them up flush.

Camo boat, good for duck hunting. After 2 or 3 cycles of sand/spray/sand/fill/sand the hull fairing is almost done. The white is high-build primer, the tan is spray fairing and the grey is trowelled filler.

Next will be a final layer of spray filler ahead of preparations for turning the hull over in coming weeks.

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