Three small areas on the hull required a light sanding to smooth the final coat of epoxy fairing compound, but with that out of the way I spent the whole day working on cleaning up and preparing the boat for primer.  During the course of the day, I vacuumed and solvent-washed the hull and deck, draped plastic over the bottom and the trailer, and taped out all the hatch, porthole, and other openings on deck.

On the hull, note that I taped the top of the existing boottop  for now.  Because I didn't want to lose the location of the original stripe--a ghost of which remained visible in the gelcoat, along with portions of the original molded-in scribe lines--I chose to tape here and apply primer only above the boottop, rather than lose the line and have to re-strike it later.  Later, I planned to prime and paint the boottop separately.

I hoped to be able to apply the high-build primer to both the deck and the hull in a single days' spraying, but in case time or other factors prohibited it, I decided to tape and mask off the top part of the hull (beginning at the hull-deck seam) to prevent overspray during the deck spraying--a small consolation to uncertainty that would keep the hull clean in case I needed to apply the hull primer on a second day.

A bit of preparatory work remained, including some final cleanup and preparing the paint equipment and materials.

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