What's in a Name?

I previously mentioned that we had to decide if we were going to rename the boat at the time of purchase. We chose to rename her Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver’s character in the Aliens franchise, because:

1. We’re nerds for sci-fi and pop culture, and are fans of the movies.
2. Ripley is a strong female lead; we’re following the tradition of naming boats after women.
3. It’s a single, short word, which should make it easier to memorize in the phonetic alphabet:

Romeo India Papa Lima Echo Yankee

Unbeknownst to us at the time, renaming a boat is actually very bad luck. Legend has it that every boat’s name is recorded by Poseidon in the Ledger of the Deep. To safely rename a boat, you must first purge the old name from the Ledger by removing and destroying any previous references to the old name. Then, you must make an offering to Poseidon and perform a renaming ceremony.

Before we could satisfy the mystical requirements, we had to physically replace the name on the boat. We found that the only way to remove the old vinyl is to apply heat before attempting to scrape the old letters off. We waited for a day without rain to do this, because we used my hairdryer to apply heat, and did not want to use the hairdryer in the rain. For safety, we attached the hairdryer to the lifelines with a short lanyard, so it could not fall into the water.

Once the old vinyl was removed, we cleaned and prepped the surface for the new vinyl. For this, we carefully applied a citrus-based solvent using a rag, and let it sit for about 5 minutes before attacking it with a plastic scraper. Once all the adhesive was picked up, we wiped the extra solvent up with mineral spirits, then washed the whole area with soap and water.

After allowing the surface to dry, we measured the location for the new name. The new vinyl came in one long sheet, perfectly spaced and cut, to make installation as easy as possible. We used the blue line on the hull as our reference point, and measured down 1.5" and forward 2" from the aft end of the line. We lined the top of the vinyl transfer paper up with these marks, and then taped it across the top with painter’s tape, forming a hinge.

To make it easier, I cut between each letter, so we’d only have to do one at a time.

We used the wet-installation technique to apply the vinyl. This required a spray bottle filled with water and a couple drops of liquid soap. I removed the backing paper and lightly sprayed the boat and the letter being applied. Shane then very carefully pressed the letter into place. He did an excellent job - I didn’t see any air bubbles in the vinyl.

Because we used the wet-installation technique, we let the adhesive dry for at least 30 minutes.

Once dry, we peeled up the transfer tape to reveal the new name.

With the name physically changed, it was time to perform the renaming ceremonies. We carefully followed these instructions as close to the letter as we could. We double-checked that all items bearing the old name were removed from the boat, and gave our offering of champagne to Poseidon and the Four Winds (keeping one glass each for the Capitan and Mate, as is tradition 🥂).

And that was it! Our CT 38 Warwick is now officially Ripley.

You might be asking: why did this take so long? We bought the boat over a year ago - why are we just now getting around to this? For starters, I wanted to get the official documentation from the Coast Guard before renaming. We finally received the documentation February 8th, 2022 - a full 8 months after purchasing the boat.

We first attempted the renaming on a rare sunny weekend in April. I tried to scrape off the old lettering without applying heat, but quickly realized that simply wouldn’t cut it. As I mentioned before, this spring was one of the wettest on record, so we didn’t have many other opportunities to do this work until now.

All told, it took us 4 days of working at the boat to complete this process. It was a lot of work, but it feels very rewarding to take this step of making this boat our own. Now, we’re ready to take to the water once again! ⛵