Okay, this part of the boat build is, in fact, absolute torture, and you quickly find out you have very few friends who love you enough to come help :-P
I worked on fairing between April and August 2022. Yep... five months. This part of the boat build was frustratingly slow. It just didn't move anywhere. To be fair, I spent some time volunteering after severe weather in Brisbane between February and April 2022, then I spent a few weeks job hunting, and in June 2022, I started a new job. So this was a period of adjustment, and I had less time to work on the boat; hence, things were getting delayed.
What's so god awful about fairing... well everything from start to finish for an amateur to be honest. Prepare for your back to hurt from your neck down to your bottom. In the beginning, I was terrible at applying the fairing compound evenly, which meant the job of sanding it was that much worse. You have to sand the fairing with a long sanding board to get an even finish. I had to repeat the process of applying the fairing and sanding it down a few times to get an even smooth finish with no low areas. I can't actually decide which part of the sanding job was worst: the sides where you have to twist your body sideways, the chines that are hard to reach, and you kinda need to stand between two ladders to get a good range of movement or the hull bottom where you kneel or your knees bent forward like you're scrubbing the floor for hours.
My two sailing friends Christine and Jeanie finally came to my rescue towards the end and with joint effort we were able to get the fairing job finished.
I had the boat under a gazebo tent to minimise dust spreading, so I often worked inside a dust cloud in a humid tent. A good respirator mask is an absolute must for this, at least for me. There were a few times when I took the respirator off for short periods of time, e.g. to answer a phone call or talk to someone. Whenever I did that, I ended up not being able to sleep that night because I was coughing and wheezing for the next 24 hours.
