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Well I decided to give the peel ply a go... hope it lives up to its name and peels!

First I faired the edge of the tape with a bit of car body filler, sanded that and then mixed up 300gm of epoxy and added 1/3 by volume of fumed silica to make my gelcoat. Think I should have made a tad more but we'll see when its cured. I put the gelcoat on with a brush and then laid the peel ply over and smothed it out with a plastic squeegee.

Report back how it peeled...

I noticed some light spots/flecks in the peelply pic. My experience is that those are areas where there is air between the ply and your substrate. I usually paint some plain epoxy on top of the ply to help force the air out.

erik

Thanks, Erik, good tip! I don't know why I was reluctant to use before. It peeled beautifully.

The light spots you could see are areas of filler down at the blue foam level, still showing through. I took pains to squeeze all the bubbles out. There were a couple of voids at the LE and TE, I think because there was too little gelcoat to go right to the edge in places but I'll fill those with some micro balloons and epoxy before I finish. But hey, no sanding necessary over most of the blade. I am well pleased with the result.

Off topic but I spent most of the day getting my F21 off its trailer and onto blocks, so I can get at my keels for antifouling and repair... one is sticking on its was down.
However before that I did manage to get gelcoat on the second side and peeled off the peel ply this evening. So I just need to fill a few patches, sand and paint. I'll give it a rattle can of primer before I antifoul it.

Nearly done. This morning I made a filler of epoxy and micro balloons and filled the small voids left around the edges of the gel coat. This was cured enough this afternoon to sand off. Its now ready for primer.

Primer paint arrived late yesterday, so gave one side a couple of coats this morning. Overall I am pleased with the result there are still one or two small voids that I'll fill with car body filler.

Fill, sand, spray. Good enough I think, if it was gloss not antifouling going over this I'd fettle it a bit more. I'll flip it tomorrow and finish it.

That looks great. I'm certain it will feel different driving, too. Good job!

Thanks Erik, I’ve learnt a lot in the process.

If anyone else would like to try this, I was sent a reject core along with the one I used. There isn’t much wrong with it for this kind of job. Would be happy to send it on for the cost of postage.

Job done, I put the rudder back together today after a couple of coats of antifouling.