It took a couple of hours to knock the keel down to the specified radii. I was a little hesitant since it is harder to put foam back on than it is to shave off. But with reassurance from Ian Farrier (which was remarkable if for no other reason than he had just experienced a serious earthquake in New Zealand the same day I emailed him), I went ahead and rounded over the keel. The logic is the soft radius reduces wetted area, making for a faster boat. I was careful to knock it down along the entire length simultaneous so as to avoid an irregular keel line. I used the cheese grater for rough cutting and the long board for final figuring.
Here is an interesting view from the stern looking forward along the keel. I am really happy with the figure of the hull and keel. I think there is pretty good symmetry, and the lines of the hull seem to flow nicely. Now I get to make it ugly again!
And here is the next step in fairing prior to glassing. We skimmed the surface with a slightly thin fairing putty (1.25 cups balloons per 150 mL mixed epoxy), and then scraped most off with a fairing batten (actually it was a piece of sail batten from our old fashioned monohull, I can't believe anyone still sails with a single hull!) The result was the putty filled in the low areas between the remaining fairing stripes we discussed last post. And the higher areas were left pretty much bare. Once this cures we should be able to sand it smooth with minimal effort. Assuming we didn't miss any low spots, we would then be able to move on to glass work. However, I am still waffling between glassing or installing the access port plates first. Stay tuned to see how this conundrum is resolved!
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