Firefly gets her name! And a few other items are new, too!

"Everything's SHINY Cap'n!"

Edit: I feel the need to say more upfront that, yes, we named our boat after one of our favorite TV shows, Firefly. When we bought the boat, we put possible names to a vote at the dinner table. After much discussion, everyone agreed, especially our teen daughters, that we name her "Firefly". Serenity would have been nice too, but it's just such a cute little boat, it needed a cute little name. Firefly fits for many different reasons. First and foremost, the boat suffered and has now been lovingly restored. (as Mal said “Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse... but you take a boat in the 'air' (Sic) that you don't love... she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the 'air' when she ought to 'fall' down... tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.”) We love our little Firefly!

As a graphic artist of over 20 years, I usually frown upon blatant theft of a logo or identity, but here, it seemed more like a tribute. Considering how most fans of the show feel, it fought hard to stay alive but was cancelled too soon by Fox. But it lives on in the hearts of millions of viewers. So with all that in mind, I felt that using the original TV show's typestyle behooved our "Tribute". I hope that it doesn't offend any fans or infringe on a trademark (too badly), but we, unabashedly so, love it and stand behind our decision! :)

Now! On with the boat blog!

Well, this Mother's Day weekend, the plan was to go for a little sail, possibly just over at Lake Maumelle. But we opted to take care of the house and lawn and a few other things. That included working on some boat projects. One that we really wanted to do, as a family, was to finally apply the boat's name graphics.

I started work cleaning up the mast and working on making the mast sleeve coupler slide better. It had been caked up with what looks like dry graphite, the kind locksmiths use to make locks turn better. Really the wrong kind of stuff in there. I'm guessing it was left over from the original owner as the most current previous owner said he used SailKote, which appears to be true from the white powdery stuff I saw on it as well. We'll be buying some new SailKote to use on that and the luff slides. We'd really like to fair and paint the mast as well, but that might be a next season thing. Making sure that it's fit, tightening bolts and checking fittings is enough for now.

Stacey wanted to finish working on some sewing projects for the boat. We made a template for the companionway cover and she designed and created this great bag for holding the companionway boards! I always wanted something like this on my first sailboat, LuckyStar. She did a great job!

It has a nice divider to protect that pretty finish we put on the boards last year!

Very nautical looking, eh?

I wanted to finish the table I'd started by ironing on the veneer edging and then painting the edges and back. It's complete, for better for worse...better than nothing AND cup holders!!

  

So, last but not least...

Applying vinyl like this, wet and soapy water is the only way to go. 

Squeegee and smooth until it dries a little. Then you can start peeling off the backing.

Corey swears that she's not mad, she was thinking "Oh crap, I'm in the shot!"

We did something a little weird with the port name but we like it!
I made the comment "I hope we never heel over so much that you can read that proper!"

And...Yes! For those of you smarties taking note out there, I kinda ripped off
the Firefly TV show logo, but we love it and, hey, it's our tribute!