Ok, but where are we now?

As you might be wondering, if the previous post is the "origin" story, what is the current status of this project?

Well, progress has been what you might call "slow".  Glacial, really, and I could make excuses, but instead I'll tell you what *has* been done over the past 18 months.  To start, I scraped the loose paint off of the bottom using a hand scraper.  Then, I removed the exhaust trim and sanded the transom, tsk tsking the rot along the water line and in the corners.  I removed the trim along the stem below the waterline, and then I started sanding the bottom, starboard side first.  I've worked my way forward above the chine, and the last sanding I did (2/12/11), I spent about an hour on the port side of the bow below the chine.

The sanding I've done on the bow, in two photos that show where I'm headed next, joined because blogger can't put two pictures on the same line??

As you can see, I'm not going all the way down to bare, bare wood.  There are lots of reasons for this, as follows. Any paint that is still there after I've gone by with the sander is stuck pretty well, so I might need a rougher sand paper. (I'm using 100 grit right now.)  The sanding is uncovering blemishes (look at that nasty one 3 boards below the water line!) which will require more sanding later.  Lastly, I don't want to spend the rest of my life sanding! (Then why did you jump into a wooden cruiser project?!)