We’ve had a rainier and stormier spring this year, which led to my cancelling our mid-May launch of Splendido and gave me a little more time to get her ready this year. My buddy Jamie helped me change the tires on the trailer, polish her up and put a nice coat of wax on so our 26-year old girl can shine.

I noticed a few small chips in the gel coat this spring, likely caused by small rocks thrown up during trailering the boat down from Tahoe, so I tried my hand at gel coat repair this year. After watching a couple of YouTube™ videos, I mustered the courage to start, and found it to be a pretty interesting process – and all in all, easier than I had anticipated. One of the side effects, though, was that when I removed the protective blue painter’s tape I had placed around my gel coat repairs, I inadvertently took off some of the hand-lettering paint that my good friend Lane Walker of Solo Signs had put on about eight years ago.

In my eyes, Lane Walker is a living legend in the art of pinstriping and hand-lettering. I met him about 30 years ago when I worked for Harrah’s corporate advertising department and he worked for an outfit called Silver Dollar Signs hand-painting casino showcards and signage. After Silver Dollar closed its doors, Lane struck out on his own with Solo Signs, and has a bustling practice painting long-haul trucks and doing custom designs and pinstriping work for hotrodders, custom motorcycle embellishments, and all manner of hand-painted restoration projects.

Watching Lane work is a joy. He hand-mixes and matches colors before your very eyes, and the accuracy is uncanny. He explained to me his collection of brushes made from the hairs of a particular Russian squirrel, and the virtues of now-banned lead paint, which flowed like a dream off his brushes and “wore like iron,” in contrast to today’s differently formulated paints.

In about 45 minutes, Lane restored Splendido’s logo to like-new, and a quick polish and coat of wax will make her ready for launching.

We splashed the boat on June 21^st and the launch went fine, although writing this a day after, I am sore and tired from the effort. I am grateful to Lane and Jamie and Debbie and Tracy and the folks at Obexer’s for all their help, and looking forward to sailing with all of them on the great sheet of blue water called Lake Tahoe.

Fair winds and smooth sailing! DB