Thank you all for your comments. We are flo coating pretty much the way it is described in The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction. We put down a thin film of Silvertip Fast Epoxy, wait about an hour, then use the notched squeegee to put on a coat that self-levels quite well. The flo coat is meant to take the place of three thinner coats. All the pieces we have done thus far are for the interior of the boat, and it sounds like we should be particularly careful about preparing any edges that need to be bonded/filleted. It also sounds like we should do the hull in the more traditional three coat way.
We have limited space in the shop, so plan to do the piece-work described in the plans while we still have a big surface to work on, before starting the hull.
Thus far, I have learned the following:
1. Even if the shipper loses my boat kit for three weeks (which did in fact happen), I should not lose my cool. They did eventually find it. Alan helped encourage them to look!
2. There is an art to epoxying, and it is learnable.
3. Particularly in this time of Covid, it's really fun to have a big, interesting project.
Samantha