My second attempt at filleting the bow went a little better. I made a stiffer mix this time (less like Dairy Queen soft-serve and more like regular ice cream). It was more workable, and I hit on a pretty handy way to apply it in tight spaces: put epoxy mix in a zip-log bag, snip off a corner, and use it like a pastry chef's icing bag to squeeze the epoxy into spaces you can't reach with regular tools.
However, it didn't all go my way. After filleting the forward third of the bilge to the proper radius, I cleaned up and went to work. When I got home in the evening, I found that the epoxy had flowed downhill and pooled in the bow. I now have the world's thickest fillet at the bow. In the photo at right, you can see how the areas in the foreground were, at one time, covered with whitish epoxy -- but it has all flowed down to the end of the hull, where it's pooled much deeper than necessary.
One other minor victory: note the clean edges on my fillets at right. This is due to my friend Steve's masking tape technique, which really does produce a cleaner result than the alternative. But overall, I have to say that epoxy filleting is my least favorite part of the whole process so far.
Finally, I picked up a cheap nylon windbreaker at the thrift store the other day, and from it cut out the Wharram insignia and sail numbers that will eventually go on my sail, once the sail is sewn together. The sail number is the number of my plan set; the logo and number together uniquely identify my boat.
I think it looks pretty sharp. My wife is not fond of the Wharram logo, as she feels that it looks like a pair of breasts. She's right, it does -- once somebody points it out to you -- and I'm pretty sure the resemblance not accidental, as it was supposedly taken from some prehistoric goddess emblem. But while I wouldn't sew mudflap girls or a Playboy bunny logo onto my sail, I don't think the resemblance is enough to justify keeping the designer's logo off the sail. I'm proud that my boat is a Wharram, and I want people to know. So the logo stays, and if anyone asks, I'll tell them what I just wrote.
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