: 1) Whilst away for 6 months I kept the hull joined to the deck (on the forms)
: by using packing tape (I had removed most of the staples so as to enable
: me to sand around the sheer) now I am back and not so merrily sanding away
: I notice the areas where the tapes been around the boat are lighter and
: wont sand out anyone out there have any suggestions?

Might be differing degrees of oxidation - more for the darker exposed wood, less for the lighter covered wood. A few years ago I had an unfinished cedar french door that sat around for a while before I got around to installing it. It was shrink-wrapped except for a small tear in the plastic packaging. By the time I was ready to work on the door, the exposed bit under the tear had darkened considerably. The oxidation (if thats what it was) must go deep, because I sanded the h*** out of it but I can still find it if I hunt for it. Fortunately, no one else knows its there, so they don't notice it. Not sure if there is any other solution besides sanding.

: 2) I went to almost absurd lengths when stripping the hull to ensure all the
: strips married up, but invetitably at the stern I had to match and glue
: some strips which I patched over the existing strips to pack the shape out
: a bit. Now as I sand them down there are nasty glue marks over the
: original hull strips appearing, I have tried without great success trying
: to scratch them away with a scalpel, sanding and using
: solvents........HELP!!

I'll be interested to hear how this works out for you, because I have one strip that is lying low (off-center cove, I think), and I thought I'd just glue on a thin matching strip onto the surface, then plane & sand fair. But I am worried about how the glue surface will behave at the feathered ends of the "over-strip". The cabinet scraper worked well on the glue joint at my scarph joints, so maybe thats the ticket here as well.