Summer?? Mousefur and sanding

May.  After the coldest winter in more than 50 years I had been looking forward to this as May should bring the green colour out accompanied by the wonderful smells of life emerging from the remnants of winter.  We should be able to wear a few layers of clothes less than the previous months, and maybe even no shoes!  Seems not.  This is what I saw out the window yesterday, trying to get a glimpse of the fjord.

Seems like it could be a while before we harvest the fruit and berries in the garden as well.  What happened to global warming?

I am a big fan of savings in fairing compound, both labour, money and weight wise.  Which means I will not spend time or money fairing the interior, except perhaps a few small details.  A nice finish and welcoming atmosphere is however desirable.  Farrier/Corsair have solved this using Frontrunner(R) fabric, which is also recommended by Ian Farrier as a durable and light weight fabric, so I have tried to source that particular fabric for the purpose.  It is, as far as I have been able to establish, not available in Europe, but  Litestream in Las Vegas has this fabric in stock, and was selling for a reasonable price, however the shipping to Norway was way more than the fabric itself, and then Norwegian taxes on top of that....
Trough help from the Yahoo! F-boat group I was able to find alternative fabrics in Europe and yesterday I received a sample of VV Softex Grey A70 n from Meubelstoffenvoordeel.nl.  It has a comfortable colour and texture, is light weight, are made for a moist environment and passed my 8 month old daughter's chewing-test (durable).

The sample:

It also convincingly passed the enhanced velcro-test:

So then, Dutch Softex it will be.

I was planning to laminate the external beam mount lower folding strut bracket bolting areas yesterday.  I didn't get to it, as the preparation work with rounding corners and filling gaps turned out to be a major time consumer.  But I'm getting there.  Forward lower folding strut bracket bolting area with hull turned up side down.

I also used a paint roller handle to make a special-tool for diggging out foam from tight locations, in this case the cockpit drain holes, wish I did this a long time ago, it made foam digging (a formerly detested activity) almost enjoyable.