The last coat of varnish is on. Well ... the last coat before it gets wet. I may very well sand it again in July or August, and put on a few more coats. Regarding the process for varnish -- what a pain. It is either too gloppy or too thin. I used a marine-grade spar varnish with UV inhibitors from System Three. It seems to do the trick. I ended up following the advice of Vaclav from OneOceanKayaks regarding application. His magic marker trick is pretty sweet. Working this way just seemed to work better for me. Not quite sure why. But I do know I've only got to pop in the bulkheads, add a (temporary) seat, do the rigging, and then it's gettin' wet. I even had the roof rack on the car today just to make sure everything fit.