After what I thought was a easy road to refinishing a nearly completed hull, a small oversight turned into a major headache. As you know I had to due a finish cure on the hull. I decided to put one more coat of epoxy down, heat cure it and then finish sand for painting. When that finish coat of epoxy was mixed wrong on my part, and failed to harden. Instead I ended up with a hard gum over the entire hull. That is equivalent to a 4x8 sheet of plywood in area. The only way to save my hull was to scrape this gum off. Using heat lamps and a chisel, it took weeks to clean the hull of this nightmare.

My work room was a mess. I didn't clean it for weeks. You could not see the floor from all the epoxy, foam, sand paper and dust from my work on the Belle River and Edmund Fitzgerald. 2004 is a big year for the myself and the G.L.M.A. and I have to get as much done on these boats as I can.

I now have the hull ready for paint, so I'm back in shape now.

The only good that came out of this came from Alen Hichman. He sent me a copy of some plans for the Edgar B. Speer. I noticed my bow wasn't shaped right, so this gave me the chance to fix this oversight.