Life finds a way (to get in the way) but some progress has been made, the keel and rabbet is assembled and I have sanded a first approximation of the head taper.
The scale of the model hit home in a different way when the keel was laid. Its quite large, in a good way. Having it occupying the desk is different from the theory of it will be 32" :).
I'm not sure whether the taper should be continued down towards the waterline or stop roughly as it does now. Also unsure if it should be taken further towards the stern. For the figure to sit without any tension I should reduce the width a bit more, fractions of a millimetre, but I'm starting to eat into the thinner knee (correct part name? the fancy piece with notches). Perhaps that's as it should be?
Chuck, thanks for the advice on sanding parts while in the sheet!
When sanding the head I had to remove to much material around the box joint, I think I did a bad job when clamping the pieces during gluing so they were not perfectly in plane. I didn't really notice how much I removed at the time but it became obvious when mating the head to the keel. Next I plan to sand the keel around the box joint in the problem area to get a nice transition from head to keel. It will be a bit thinner that it should be but it is what it is. After that I will finish sanding the surface with high grit and apply some surface protection before mounting the aprons.
The kit came with enough spare parts for one additional complete head and keel assembly so I'm toying with the idea of assembling that and comparing the results. Possibly using poly for one and shellac on the other, for science as it were.
I'm greatly enjoying the project so far, it delivers on creating a sense of building the model, rather than assembling it, which is what I was hoping for.