After being tied up on other projects and office work for most of the morning, I spent the afternoon beginning the next steps in the deck preparation process.

First, I used a 2" Roloc disc sander to dish out the various old fastener holes in the deck that needed filling.  Since most of the deck hardware was to be replaced, and because there wasn't necessarily a reason to be held to pre-existing locations for some of the other items, most of the old holes needed to be filled and faired.  For example, all the old pulpit and stanchion locations were to be changed, and with new genoa tracks anticipated, the old locations all needed to be repaired.

I ground out each hole in a roughly circular dish, and appropriately deep to contain filler and help fair in the areas later.  I worked my way around the sidedecks, leaving the coachroof and cockpit for another day. 

Fortunately, most of the deck wasn't badly crazed or cracked, but in some areas there were stress cracks emanating from the old hardware locations, and to the extent reasonable I ground out these cracks for repair as well.

Once I had the initial grinding done, I switched to a larger grinder and sanded more extensively in a few areas that required additional treatment.  Specifically, the old stanchion bases had compressed the decks somewhat, and had also caused the gelcoat beneath to begin to fail, so I ground out larger areas in these locations, as well as around the old genoa track location, and several places where the gelcoat was failing, such as behind the coaming blocks and beneath the old wooden winch pads outboard of the cockpit.

I mixed epoxy putty using microballoons and cabosil, and troweled it on where necessary using a plastic squeegee.  Filling and fairing is a multi-step process that requires several applications, with sanding between, in order to achieve a fair and smooth surface.

I left the epoxy to cure overnight.

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