Paint day. After looking at a shiny fiberglass hull these many months I was happy to finally do some painting. I laid out masking tape above and below the 2nd to 5th plank lines and went to work with my white acrylic paint and brush. My shoddy, amateurish paint job seemed to inadvertently add some simulated wood grain details to the fiberglass hull. Works for me.

Two coats was enough to reveal that I hadn't scored the plank lines deep enough in several places to really stand out. Arg. So I took my scribing tool and retraced the lines freehand, a somewhat frustrating and time consuming enterprise. Then I applied a very light coat of paint. Much improved.

Next I taped over the white band and applied the black. Bye, bye shinny fiberglass hull look. Hello "it actually looks like wood" look. Happy days.

Before painting the port side I scored out the plank lines deeper. Much easier without paint already on them, but still took me about three hours. Painting was much quicker and more fun.

While I try to decide on the paint plan for the rest of the ship I started to prepare the bulwarks for their paint day.

Belaying pin racks. I made eight total to line up opposite the four channels. Seven holes per rack looked about right. I only bought 40 belaying pins from Model Expo so guess I'll need to re-up at some point.

I drilled two precariously thin holes per board for pinning directly under the inner rail trim. I used my leftover basswood plank wood so the pin racks are not going to be the most robust part of the ship. I'll wait to glue them in place once I decide on the bulwark's color scheme.

Week 25