Letter Perfect
YEAH, YOU CAN BUY SOME PLASTIC STICK-ONS AT YOUR LOCAL MARINE STORE. OR, YOU CAN ORDER A COMPUTER-CUT VINYL BOAT NAME ONLINE. OR, YOU CAN TAKE A WAY MORE INTRIGUING AND ARTISTIC ROUTE.
OBY CAPT. BILL PIKE ver the years I’ve personally affixed names to boats in a variety of ways. During my youth, I simply painted the letters on with a child’s watercolor brush. The results looked okay, I suppose, and at least got the job done. Then, as my tastes and circumstances evolved and I began frequenting chandleries and marine discount houses, I transitioned into plastic letters (black, mostly, but sometimes white) with peel-andstick adhesive on the back. Again, the results looked okay, I guess, and the job was serviceable enough when complete. A decade or so ago, I acquired a vessel with three salty, varnished-teak nameboards, and hired a fellow to replace old letters with new, all dressed up in glowing, gold leaf. Gorgeous? Heck yes, but also just a tad stodgy.
Earlier this year, after purchasing the latest in a long line of vessels I’ve been lucky enough to own during a lithe and lively lifetime, I decided to go with an altogether different approach—I had the boat’s transom sanded clean and spraypainted (see Ghost Busters in the November 2016 issue of Power & Motoryacht), thereby turning it into a tabula rasa of sorts, and then hired a “real boatyard Van Gogh,” as he was described to me by some of my waterfront buddies, to apply the name: Betty Jane II, using the method said Van Gogh deemed most long-lasting and appropriate. And oh, this artist was to apply the hailing port of Jacksonville, FL., as well.
“I can either paint the name on,” suggested Larry Dillon of Signs By Dillon in Jacksonville, Florida ( www.signsbydillon.com), “or I can use vinyl. One or the other … it’ll cost you just about the same.”
But was one approach just a smidge better than the other? The question elicited a couple of specifics that I paid serious attention to, given that they came from a guy who’s been putting names on