I do like to seal coat. It eliminates the fear of wetout lines that can occur when wetting through cloth and reduces the quantity of epoxy that gets soaked into by the porous cedar.

If you sand through the wetted color of the epoxy sealed wood, when you rewet a permanent light spot will remain. I use a cabinet scraper to remove bumps and hardened sanding fuzz to avoid sanding through the color. It only takes 10 minutes to scrape a hull or deck.