And so it begins.....

The first steps of the construction are made. The hull is cleaned and sanded and the main deck is cut out of the plywood sheet, which was a bit more difficult than expected. The deck and its edges are sanded, so that they are very smooth now.

In difference to the construction manual, I added the keel already now. This is because I got the hint to do most of the painting of the hull before adding the deck (with all the superstructures) to it, to prevent the deck to get covered with sanding dust form the hull (black dust on bright deck will not be too good).

Another advice was to paint the deck in a black before adding the wooden planks to it, to get a better visual effect if two planks will have a little gap between them.

The next step will be to fill the gaps between keel and hull with putty and start sanding....

The first round of sanding is over now. I painted the keel to see there additional sanding and putty is required. Painting those parts makes this easier then to examine the wood, partly covered with putty.

The planks have been glued to the deck and the edges have been cut and sanded. While the deck edges are very smooth now, the deck itself is not, this one needs to be sanded later as well.