Aft board restoration
Roger Hughes restores his boat’s new name and port of registration on her transom
Tackling a name plate’s heavy, solid mouldings can be messy
There is often more than one nautical term for the exact same thing on a boat. This includes the boards showing the boat’s name and its port of registration. The board carrying the name can rightly be called the name plate, or the stern board, or the aft board, because they are usually mounted on the stern, the transom, or aft section of the boat.
These boards are not to be confused with quarter boards, which show the ship's name on either stern quarter, not actually on the stern. A boat will normally also have a board showing its port of registration, but not it’s home port – which is different, and which can also be mounted on... well you get my drift.
When I bought Britannia she had another name and was registered as an American vessel in San Diego, California. In due course I undocumented her and re-christened her Britannia, probably the oldest name of any British ship, going back to Roman times. I found the name available in the Isle of Man ship registry, and I am proud to have it.
Both boards therefore needed new letters and restoration. They were heavy solid mouldings in glassfibre resin fastened to the transom with stainless screws and lashings of adhesive caulking. It was very difficult to lever them off, even using two foot long pry-bars, and it left a big mess which then meant cleaning up and polishing the whole transom.
The original name and registration port were simply white vinyl letters, stuck on the blue painted boards and they certainly didn’t do any justice to the elegant hourglass stern of Britannia.
I first sanded the boards with my belt sander, which made short work of all the letters and smoothed out the globules of paint and varnish which had been applied over the years. I then undercoated both boards with two coats of two-part epoxy primer, rubbing down between coats with 120-grit sandpaper. I then rolled three coats of Flag Blue paint on each board – again rubbing down between coats, and finishing with 250-grit, which produced a hard, glass-like finish.
Both boards had a half-inch wide cove stripe inlay along the top and bottom, and these I carefully painted with Total Boat metallic gold paint. This actually contains copper dust to give it the gold colour, but the heavier metal sinks to the bottom of the tin, so it needs constant vigorous stirring.
Rather than stir the paint with a wooden paddle which my paint supplier includes with every paint order, (along with a mixing pot, gloves and a filter), I wetted
my small paintbrush with the thicker paint from the bottom of the tin, brought to the surface on the stirrer. This gave me more gold on the brush, but it still took four coats to produce the simulated gold leaf effect I wanted, which was very striking against the dark blue background.
Finally I painted on two coats of clear varnish, which further increased the shine of the gold paint.
For the name Britannia I purchased nine gold coloured moulded acrylic letters, each 4in tall. These are sold internationally from www.buysignletters.com but at about £11 each were not cheap. The gold colour is impregnated into the acrylic moulding and I was assured they will never tarnish. I ordered my letters fitted with threaded nylon bushes in the back of each letter to enable them to be fastened through the boards with stainless steel set screws. The company offers other methods of fixing the letters to any type of board: stud mounting, wire mounting, flange mounting and outside brackets.
I first made a template of each letter by tracing the outline on card and cutting them out, then I pressed through the template with a pencil to mark the position of the studs. I could then align each template evenly on the curved boards and mark the centre of the stud holes. I drilled through with a drill and fastened the letters to the board from the back.
As an added adornment I bought a set of four ornamental appliqués from Amazon.com. The two larger scrolls were for the name board and the smaller ones for the port-of-registration board. They are made from thick plywood, so they had to be thoroughly waterproof sealed, first with epoxy undercoat, then gold painted, before being glued to the boards with epoxy adhesive.
For the port name I had nine 3in letters cut from self adhesive gold vinyl by a local sign shop, ensuring the same typeface as the letters for the boat’s name. The sign shop also stuck them down accurately on the curved board for me, which was something I was doubtful I could do myself without getting some ugly bubbles in the lettering.
The boards were then ready to fasten back on the transom. I coated the backs with a liberal application of marine caulk, which also sealed the screws.
When both boards were screwed tightly back where they came from I filled the screw holes with an epoxy putty I bought from the local auto repair store. To finish off I sanded them smooth into the cove stripes and repainted over with gold paint – I’m a great believer in doing the job properly and not spoiling the ship for a ha’penth of tar.
After removing excess caulk round the edges of both boards with a sharp knife, the job was done.