I was able to get the second coat of varnish on the deck this morning. There were a couple of small areas that I didn’t get great coverage on. The hatch covers have also been challenging for me to varnish so far. The varnish wants to pool around the stand-off blocks, no matter how careful I am when I am tipping the varnish off. This makes sanding for the next coat a real chore. The best advice I can offer about how to avoid this is that after you have carefully varnished on and around the stand-off blocks and the rest of the hatch covers, go back and tip off with a new (completely dry) foam brush. This helped suck up the excess varnish that pools around the blocks and makes a more uniform finish overall. I still didn’t get perfect results, but I certainly got better results than when I used the same brush to apply the varnish and tip it off. I have also found that it is really easy to be too aggressive when sanding the small strip between the stand-off blocks and the edge of the cover. Anyone reading this who has any advice for me that would make this easier, I’m all ears. Please leave a comment and let me know. I am considering revising my original plan to use two coats of the Flagship Varnish, followed by two coats of the Captain’s Varnish. The sanding is giving me enough trouble that I am worried that I am going to screw up my finish in a way that will be hard (or impossible) to fix. So much so that I am considering just putting on one coat of the Captain’s Varnish. We’ll see how the next round of sanding and the first coat of Captain’s Varnish goes on I guess, and I’ll decide then if I want to follow with a fourth coat. Pygmy says that “three coats are generally sufficient for protection”, but I know that more coats are better. That said, I also need to finish the kayak with my sanity intact, so…