What`s in a Name?

There`s nothing quite so rewarding as painting your boat. I used the same paint for the canoe as I used for my sailboat. It`s expensive paint (one part polyurethane) but I like the results and do not want to deal with peeling paint at a later date. I used a fiberglass wash, a white primer designed for this paint and did a careful job with a brush: two coats, to cover any lingering remains of the faded blue of the original gel coat. Sometime early on in the building process I decided to aim for only an OK quality of finish and the mirror finish shows up the blemishes. For the red and yellow stripes I used a hardware store plastic paint. For interior seats and floorboards I used floor paint I had on hand. Any parts covered in epoxy/graphite I left alone.

I painted the name and home port freehand between two strips of masking tape over lightly penciled in letters.

By using the Interlux Brightside“Hatteras off white” as the main colour inside and out I kept the canoe looking simple and uncomplicated. It should be cool in the summer sunlight. It will share one common colour and a touch-up paint pot with my folk boat sailboat “Safari Kati” that I am also working on.

Painting on a name has got to be a magical moment. Up to that moment the canoe is just that - a canoe, and possibly could be a “Traveller”, or “Raven,” or a dozen other names with their attendant indications of personality. Tillikum was by no means obvious until I realized that I had built a three masted modified sailing canoe, just as Captain Voss had done around one hundred years before. The fact that his Tilikum`s name meant “friend” in a west coast Indian language clinched the decision. In Victoria, the word is also spelt “Tillicum,” so this led me to combine the two spellings to make a uniquely spelled name for this canoe. TILLIKUM. Now she is named, she has taken on a separate personality. I called her home port “Victoria” to be like that first and famous ocean going canoe and our own schooner Shiriri.