You can do what ever you like - it is your boat. But before you do the lobes are knee braces that many poeple like when they are paddling. I would suggest leaving them and removing them later if you don't like them.

Yes, finnishing the comming is left to you - there have been several discussion on various ways to do this. Just look back on the forum. Everything can not be in the manual, it would be just too long!

Have fun biulding,

Joel

Thanks.  I will leave the lobes in place and reassess later on.

I guess we can agree to disagree re: the instruction manual.  Seems to me to be a fairly important step that shouldn't be "left to the student to figure out",  I guess I have higher expectations for the documentation that accompanies a $1300 do-it-yourself kit.  But I'll figure it out, with the help of this illustrious forum.

VSC,

What kind of finishing info you looking for? What's the disconnect? Here, let's use some boatbuilder logic and figure this out together.

Once you have the coaming assembled and glued to the boat, you have a rough, raw piece of wood. If it's rough, you sand it, right? Once it's sanded, it's still raw. Raw wood is not waterproof, so you epoxy it, right?

Now you've got an epoxy-coated piece of smooth wood, you either glass it or not. The manual calls out all the places that get glassed (it's that important). Since the coaming isn't mentioned, it doesn't get glassed.

So if you've got a piece of sanded epoxied wood with no glass, what do you do? Either varnish or paint it, right? Otherwise the epoxy will be ruined by the UV light from the sun.

Does that make sense? See how we were able to use boatbuilder logic to figure out what to do next, without having to see it in the manual? 

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions,

Laszlo