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Call the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and they'll stop by for an inspection. They'll look it over, discovering the pointy end which clearly signifies it as a boat. They may want receipts and stuff, but it's a fairly simple process, whereas you'll fill out some forms and mail them off. Eventually your title and registration will show up in the mail.

Sags and runs can be buffed out, which is a pro painter's secret weapon, it can be fixed. You do have to wait until it's good and dry (depending on the paint type, up to a month), than locally knock it down with some 400 or maybe a scraper, depending on how bad the run is. Work up through 600, 800 then onto a cutting compound, followed by a polish. Of course, this area will look a lot better than surrounding areas (baby's ass smooth), so you may have to polish the whole boat, which isn't a bad thing either. In the end, you may end up with a boat that is the envy of all that see it, all because of fixing a screw up or two. I've had the exact same problem, though I usually just buff up just the offending panel or side, hoping no one will notice the other panels or side.

If the weight of the boat is well supported by the centerline rollers and the bunks, just keep it from flopping over in over the road maneuvers, the aft overhang will leave no long term ill affects.

If really interested in using pigmented epoxy, this is what I've learned. I use this technique inside lockers and buoyancy tanks, where getting paint once the decks or seat tops go on, is very difficult or nearly impossible to do neatly. Epoxy formulators all suggest about 5% pigment by weight. This is because the epoxy starts to dramatically lose physical properties, once much over this amount. Given pigmented epoxy is used to avoid paint in difficult to paint areas or places that will never see paint again, you can safely go to 10%, with a slight decrease in tension modulus, compression, etc. Once over, this properties drop quickly, for example at 20% you've lost over 50% of the epoxies elongation, peel strength, etc. I've used 15% with good results inside of buoyancy chambers and lockers, where painting is just too difficult once the boat is sealed up. I have an anchor locker that wouldn't be too bad to paint if necessary, because the hatch is fairly big, but it's 15% pigmented epoxy coating is doing just fine and only took two coats to get full, solid coverage, much like if it was painted. Now, if you suggest these numbers to the epoxy formulators they'll balk, spouting off numbers and figures about stuff, you might not fully understand. This said, if you keep the mix below 20% (by weight), you'll be fine if, all you want is a tough colored coating, rather than paint. The anchor locker I mentioned gets beat up a lot, as you'd imagine, but other than some fluke scratches, it's still doing fine after a decade.

One of the things I always first look at on a home built are the edges; chines, deck lines and rails. Getting these on, so they look straight, even if they're curved in all three planes, can be daunting and a sure sign of a novice builder if they aren't. When I visited Chick a couple of years ago, he noticed as I walked up his driveway, I was eyeballing the lines, the chine, the raised deck line, etc. Yeah, I got caught, but it's what experienced builders do, we can't help it. He'd done such a nice job, he had little to be concerned about anyway. Another thing I focus on is the intersections of pieces, like a break in the half oval at the bow eye, just to be continued further up the stem, a windscreen cross brace, etc. Are they balanced, proportional, symmetrical? Same deal, it's what draws the eye and focus, so areas you can divide the men from the boys.

Agreed, solid back is the way to go, if you can afford it. Tight bends also force, as you've found, the decision. It also more uniformly spreads impact loads on the rub.

Using neat, pigmented epoxy as a primer is as costly as a good primer, plus it's a lot harder to fair and smooth. When you put pigments in epoxy, you don't get a paint like finish, as it's generally translucent, not the solid color paint produces. Of course, multiple coats can get you a solid color, but this is even more work and materials. Naturally, it can't be done as a top coat, as the epoxy will still burn with UV exposure, just more slowly then a straight neat coat. Lastly, the thing with primer is it makes a uniform "tie coat" for the top coat and can change the look of the top coat as well. For example if you paint a red over grey primer, it'll look warmer then if it was painted over a white or black primer. I'd much prefer to work primer than a neat epoxy coat, FWIW.

For more builder information about the Vacationer, you may want to have a look over at www.BYYB.org. which is a site with many more actual Vacationer builders available.

First off, all epoxies blush, even the ones that say they don't. Simply put, if it's a BPA molecule (Bisphenol A), like most marine epoxies are, it's going to blush, unless you have perfict environmental condisions in the shop, which most builders don't have. I have an A/C'd shop now and I can get non-blushing epoxies to cure without a blush, but I still don't trust that some surface contamination hasn't occurred, so I still wash freshly epoxied surfaces, just in case. This is a result of having blush ruin and force a redo on several projects. Some, not all, nor even most alkyd paints, will have a problem with fresh epoxy coatings. Most of us have a mental note about which brands and formulations have this issue, so don't use these products over fresh goo (like Rustolum marine topcoat for example). It doesn't mater if the surface was washed or not, it's a chemical reaction that occurs as the epoxy finishes it final curing process, which can take a few weeks in some cases. Most are painting before the goo is actually fully cured, so this problem comes up. This said, I've never heard of a fully cured epoxy having this issue, but I'll bet it still can occur on fully cured epoxy. I'm glad to see some of the paint manufactures are recognizing this and making cautions about it. PrimeCoat works well and being an epoxy doesn't have this issue, so if using single part Interlux paint, use the PrimeCoat or possibly an other epoxy primer. With paints getting as sophisticated as they are now, lots of things can screw with the cure. I had an issue with a "non-clogging" sand paper once. I primed, then sanded normally, but the top coat didn't stick. I did dry normally, but peeled off in huge sheets of cured paint film. After some investigation, I found the sand paper's non-clogging feature was done with animal fats, which left a residue on the surface the paint didn't bond too. Pissed me off, as I used $300 a gallon paint and had to strip every thing and do it again, for a customer that wasn't in the mood to wait. It's things like this, that force painters to stick with stuff they know, rarely varying from established products and procedures.

I think you're biting off way more then you can chew or more importantly can comprehend. Vacationer is a poor baseline to use as an offshore yacht, particularly when there are literally hundreds of other designs that are just as easy to build, with far more capabilities. Additionally, Vacationer has known other issues, that you haven't addressed, some quite obvious, which has me wondering, why such drastic changes to a protected waters craft, that's very ill suited for off shore work, when you can select far superior designs that will serve you well, without major surgery.

This is an issue that the paint manufactures are starting to catch up with. Apparently they've had comments about their alkyd base not sticking well to epoxy and indeed some alkyds do have issues with epoxy, though it's been a crap shoot as to which these might be. I've avoid this for some time using nothing but epoxy primers, but those of you that are going to use an alkyd primer, do some test samples first, to insure it's not one of the alkyds that has problems with epoxy.

There's several issues you haven't addressed with your V bottom modifications, that will need to be, if you expect this to float upright on launch day. The first is the lack of a center of masses calculation, so you can get the revised boat, to float where you'd like. You've added quite a bit of displacement to the hull form, but I don't see this as sea worthy yet, without further explanation of the adjustment of the usual "centers". This boat is a cat. D at best and making it a cat. B or A would be quite an undertaking to say the least. It would also be wise to consider some reasonable engineering concerns before the build commences, such as the false bottom. The model looks great, but you'd be well advised to do the math before cutting full size pieces of plywood.

It's usual to have the mini block hanging aft, off the leach, usually by a loop or gasket of line, then to dangle down one side. I'd imaging this will work as well, if a little more wear and tear. The trick to this setup is the location of the turning block and eye strap on the boom. I like them a little aft of their location on the sail so they pull aft a bit, when hauled down.

I too have a planimeter, that hasn't been out of the box in a decade. Yeah, I made mine to just do the job, though I used plenty of others, owned by someone else.