The head as good as finished

The head is finally as good as finished. Diana herself still needs painting, but otherwise it is more or less done.

The manual calls this one of the trickiest jobs on the boat and I can confirm that. The fitting, measuring, sanding, painting and doing it all over again was quite a job. One difficulty is getting the white-metal rails in the middle to run in line with the upper rails. At the front that worked, but on the hull side I placed the brackets slightly too far out, so unfortunately the line could no longer curve round quite as nicely. All in all still fairly pleased.

I have done the carvings in gold. I still find that yellow ochre very orange, but doing everything in gold seemed a bit much. So I solved it like this: gold carvings, plus a gold line on the blue trim pieces. I thought that looked rather smart.