This is really progressing nicely Tim!

I'm also currently modeling a ship (not any specific one as i've taken refrence from various) and came accross the same problem. Fixed it by setting "soften Harden" normals to 68.00 then Polygons -> "Average Vertices" on that areas that came up too sharp.

Hope this helps...

Quick question, on the rigging brackets, how did you punch the three holes (was it a unison boolean) ? an the metal brackets ? where they extruded nurbs circles along a curve and converted to polys ?

Cheers,

Jamie.