More progress. The keel tab has been faired quite a number of times. Getting close to finished here. Sanding off the remaining bits of bottom paint is going reasonably well. I am using an orbital attached to a shop vac. I still wear a Tyvek suit, full face mask, etc., but there is almost no free dust.

The keel on port side was sanded over plastic sheet to permit collection of lead particles. Together with the lead bits in the sander dust catcher the particles were bagged for recycling with old batteries.

The lead was immediately coated with epoxy which was wire brushed while wet. A layer of 4 oz cloth and another two coats of epoxy followed. There are a few bits of well-adhered old compound in various dimples on the keel that I did not want to sand down into. Poking at them with a chisel did not suggest they were loose.

If you look carefully there are a couple of scrapes in the lead toward the bottom end of the leading edge. The scrapes contained the oldest filler with all other coatings on top of it. They will be refilled before priming. I suspect that someone hit a rock at slow speed sometime during Yankee's first twenty years in Maine. I can find no other damage related to this evidently minor incident. The bottom of the keel is a heavy bronze "V" casting. It clearly needs another few rounds of stripper.