Well, I feel better now that the starboard shear seam is done. It went better than the port side did, and overall it worked out fine. If I had one bit of advice to give to anyone who is going to do this themselves, I would say to make sure that the fiberglass tape is well “bedded” in the epoxy fillet before you start to try to wet it out. This helped quite a bit to help keep the tape from shifting around when I was wetting it out. This was especially true in the bow and stern where I was working blind because I couldn’t get my head and my arm in the hatch opening at the same time!

The entire inside of the kayak will be cleaned and I’ll lightly sand any high spots in the tape and give it a light coat of epoxy, and then my plan is to put one coat of varnish over the entire inside of the kayak. EDIT: I talked with Suzanne at Pygmy Boats today and asked about varnishing inside the kayak, and she said in no uncertain terms, that it was a bad idea and that Pygmy advises against it. OK then. No varnish on the inside of the kayak. I’ll have to figure out another way to make the inside pretty.