As soon as the weather became more hospitable, we began to get earnest about Angels Wings hull. Essentially we had to do everything from the deck down while she was still out of the water -- and once again, we appreciated her diminutive size. Deanna's grandchildren finished out their spring school-term with us and figured greatly into our success. Rory, in particular, turned out to be quite a little bulldog with an orbital sander. Once he got the knack of it, Rory could sand the entire topsides, from waterline to deck, in about 2 1/2 to three hours -- at which point he would award himself a one-hour "coffee break" to build an intricate, fantasy condo on the nearby beach, or to ward off marauding pirates.

Painting day came upon us unexpectedly -- we'd simply run out of fairing projects, and couldn't come up with a good excuse not to proceed with the Brightside. We'd read that not everyone has great results with this modern paint; however, for us it has worked reasonably well so far. For the paint, Rory and I worked together. We used a fine nap roller and then Rory would come immediately behind and gently lay down the Brightside with a brush. We sanded with 220-grit and 400-grit paper between coats, and although it wouldn't pass a professional test, it passed our 10-foot test with ease -- i.e. looked okay from 10 feet away.

We enlisted more skilled hands to finish up the red boot stripe, when Deanna came down again and began to put the finishing touches on. I'm fairly content working with minor fiberglass repairs and the rough and ready stuff; however, Deanna has had her own woodcraft shop for many years and is more skilled and patient finishing a project so that it looks complete. In the meantime I slopped on the bottom paint.

The finishing touch, sort of a present to all of us, was to put on the state registry numbers and of course Angels Wings name. I remembered my lack of skill in putting on model car decals in my youth, I half a century before, but this went reasonably well. The directions were right on the money and in about two hours we had aligned, taped and finally permanently mounted the yellowish gold lettering with the occasional red shadow -- to complement the red boot stripe. At which point, we took a break to take some pictures and admire the progress of our little fiberglass lady.