John,

I hate the revamped Photopoint.com site, too -- it takes forever to load the pages because they've gotten so much more graphics-intensive.

There isn't much you can do to force your deck to a different position once the strips have been laid. The strips are flexible individually, but once you've compound-bent them and edge-glued them, they're pretty much set. On my Outer Island, the strips are tortured from a high foredeck to a low aft deck, and it was difficult getting the strips to stay down on the form just aft of the cockpit. The first couple of strips near the shear started to lift up, and I tried to force them to down and have the next strips I laid hold them, but it only partly worked. My aft deck ended up about 1/2" high just aft of the cockpit.

If I were in your shoes, I'd either:

1) Just go ahead and glass the deck and hull and plane the edge to match after the fact, taking a little wood off the areas just fore and aft of the gap so that you can cinch the two halves tight. -or-

2) After separating the deck from the forms, add a thin slice of a strip to the gap area, plane and/or sand it to match the hull, and continue.

Dean