: The whole point of this is to avoid the second and third coats of epoxy, as
: they do nothing for strength, and only add weight.

One individual came up with an interesting idea -- he laid one extra layer of 4-oz cloth on top of his structural layers, and sanded partway into it. In your case you would lay 3 layers, don't do any fill coats, and sand the outer layer of cloth smooth. This outer layer wouldn't have any strength left, but it would add to abrasion resistance. Not having lumpy fill coats to sand would reduce your sanding time.

I'm not sure that vacuum bagging is worth the trouble -- or the risk of it not working and ruining all your work. Squeegee'ing will force the cloth tight to the surface. This same individual above applied epoxy before laying the cloth on and pushed the cloth down to the wood surface, forcing the epoxy into the cloth from underneath, as I understand.

The difficult part is laying out the cloth on the epoxied wood without wrinkling it up. He rolled the cloth up on sections of PVC pipe. I was considering trying this method, and thought that removing a thread or 2 from the center of the cloth would give me an alignment guide to roll the cloth down the keel with. Then carefully squeegee from the keel down.

Dean