Idilio is Official

Here is a quick update (for a change!)... This Sunday, on what was likely our season's next-to-last boat weekend, we found the time to get the new name on the transom. It's been a long time coming and marks another benchmark in truly making the boat ours. While the application of the name is obviously the "big moment," we have been working on making this happen since way back during our first visits to the boat last year. Removing the old name was one of the things we did during our very first project weekend in our beloved warehouse in Manitowoc, as previously documented here (scroll towards end). 

Then, of course, we had to come up a name! We spent countless hours brainstorming, which helped to shorten many our Manitowoc drives. The list soon became long... 65 names long in fact... Many names were inspired by dancing, the Tollycraft brand, the idea of bringing something back from the brink, my original obsession with buying a Hatteras, etc. Many were in Spanish. Some were whimsical, others funny (quite a few are really inside jokes)... I won't bore you with the long list, but here are a handful that capture the range: 

Tollysaurus Rex / Jollycraft / Uncharted / Tolly Roger / Unforgotten / Coquito / Blue Hour / Gandul Azul / Blueberry Moon / Tollynovela / Tolly Bean / Gumptious / M.S. Adventure / Tolly Forth / Efortless / Relation Ship / Isleta / Naut-a-Hatt / Tipsy Tolly / Chip Hour / Meneito / I Think I Can / Tollyanna / Rapscallion / Tollyamorous ... etc

The funny thing is that Idilio was probably the first on the list. It's a name we had discussed before as a great name for our dream boat. For some reason, we kept thinking that Idilio may be "too grand or epic" for this little diamond in the rough, and that we'd save that name for "the next one." But, after the hours of brainstorming, we ended up back there. It captures the experience of being out in the water, and is inspired by a salsa song we love... what more could we want? 

BTW... we really DID come oh-so-close to naming the boat Tollysaurus Rex, to the point of mocking up both names to visualize the vibe of each. We may still nickname it the Tollysaurus... but we'll see if it sticks. Anyway... name selected, we had to design the graphic. As you see above, this transom is busy! Two ladders are in the way, as well as two tank vents (the little circles) and two clamshell fittings below those. We went back and forth between ignoring the sightline issues and centering the name, or offsetting it to starboard even though it felt oddly asymmetrical. One of the benefits of Idilio is that it fits neatly on the starboard side of the ladder. After trying several designs confined to that region, we started exploring ideas that visually extended across the full transom, until we found something we liked:

Below is the final design, which I drew in Illustrator, then overlaid in CAD with a dimensioned drawing of the transom, and eventually sent to Boat US Graphics for printing: 

Application wasn't hard, although we had to do quite a bit of gelcoat repair in advance, as the transom was full of scratches and nicks. After some patching, sanding, and buffing, we were finally ready to go! Here are a couple of pictures of the process, followed by the inevitable time lapse (presented, of course, to the beat of Idilio, so turn up the volume!) Cheers to Idilio!