Making the Grade

There are several reasons the quality of my work on the boat can suffer.  Insufficient preparation is one, impatience another.  But the biggest offender is usually hunger and fatigue.  I'll be trying to get a big chunk of work done and will neglect to eat or start getting tired and that's where things get sloppy.  And that's what happened on my fillets.  I got started an hour before lunch, and consequently put off lunch until I was done four or five hours later.  Toward the end, I was really rushing to get done so that I could get some food in my belly.   Rushing is bad for quality, but who cares about quality when you are hungry?  And now I have to pay for that.

I was shooting for an A+ on my fillets.  The best ones were probably up to that standard.  The worst ones were maybe a C.  On average I'd say it worked out to a solid "B" effort.  What this means is that the next step, sanding the fillets, won't be tooooooo onerous, but bad enough.  And with the advent of nicer weather and the activities that go along with that (hiking, kayaking, bike riding), the prospect of having to spend a few hours sanding is bad enough that I've only spent maybe an hour working on the boat in the two weeks that have elapsed since I finished filleting.