I am a new builder and yesterday I fiberglassed the hull of my Shearwater 16 Hybrid and had 2 problems that made me think that I now had a Viking Funeral Ship.

 Problem 1.  The Shearwater hybrid requires 3 seperate layers of fiberglass on the hull.  Each of these are different sizes thereby leaving a raw fiberglass edge.  When I squeegeed the epoxy, the fibers unthreaded leaving hairs or strings on the hull.  This caused a lot of stress trying to deal with them which was impossible.  The next day I decided to sand them out prior to putting on the second coat.  I rationalized that the end result would be better if the next coats were put on a good, solid base.  It worked great and the moral is DON'T SWEAT THE LITTLE HAIRS!  I suggested to CLC that they put something in the manual warning about this.  It will save builders a lot of grief.

 Problem 2. While fooling with the hairs, my epoxy thickened a bit.  It was not really noticeable but I new I needed to work fast because the cup was beginning to heat.   I epoxied a section and the epoxy would not wet the wood.  I immediately mixed up a new batch and it still would not wet  causing a white area.  I decided to sand the fiberglass down to the wood and make 2 square patches of which one was slightly smaller and installed them.  Again, it worked great!

I hope that my experiences help other builders that run into the same type of thing. I'm finding that this is really a lot of fun to build and if you work methodically it works.  If it doesn't, most of this stuff if fixable.

Charlie