I've been working on the fillets, tape and full cockpit glass of my Shearwater 16 Hybrid hull. Slowly -- in part due to work schedule, and part due to desire to feather down the tape edges, where the seams always seem to stand high. I've deviated from the instructions in several ways, and wonder if I've committed errors that need remedy.

A) I did not like the idea of the brown fillet line running down the cockpit center, especially when I saw how the thickened epoxy mixed and the edges softened when unthickened epoxy was used to finish wetting out the tape. And, I had not been aware of the masking tape trick, and applying the fillet and tape in separate steps. I wanted a clean center line, like on my Pygmy. So, is lack of that particular fillet going to be a loss of strength?

B) ...then, the tape on that cockpit center line wouldn't lay flat. (I later found that a dryer initial application worked better.) So, I had epoxy bubbles which I later sanded down, so they would be hidden by the full cockpit glass. There were quite a few bubbles, some near thumbnail size, mostly in the outer half of one side of the tape. Significant loss of strength?

C) The rest of my fillets were applied with smaller diameter tongue depressors and popsicle sticks, than the pics in the instructions. Am I getting most of my strength from the well-glassed tape, or from the fillet mass?

I'm wondering if I should run an extra layer of glass down cockpit center, and a few other places.

Oh, and I did tape the fillets on both sides of the bulkheads, and have so far glassed bulkheads inside, for strength in use as foot/back braces, as previously discussed here.

Thanks