documented vessel

Official Vega!

Back in early July we applied for Velocir to be an official USCG documented vessel.  It may make customs easier, I don’t have to pay a yearly fee to DNR, and most importantly I can scrape off the state registration numbers from the bow of the boat. I dislike them in an unreasonable fashion.

Well, apparently this process takes them MONTHS, because this week we finally got the document!! Yay, I am overly excited about this, maybe because I am proud such a small boat can be this legit.

With all the preparation work going on, I was able to steal a few hours to satisfy my desire for a carved wooden official numbers plaque.  Here’s how I made it.

In a word processing program, size the numbers in a font you like to be at least 3″ high.  Print them out, measure them to be sure.  Find a piece of wood that will be easy to carve (ours is the unused leg from our dinette table and a soft pine).  Tape the letters to the wood with simple packing tape.

Then, with a dremel carve the edges of the numbers to get the outline for each one.  This was a great guide for the router and gave me a cleaner edge.

Using a medium-sized router with a small wood attachment I ground out the numbers.  This was time-consuming and made my elbow hurt for a while, but gave clean edges and a nice depth.

Finally, some varnish and paint make it shine.  As you can clearly see, a huge mistake I made (compare this to first pic) is completely masked  (thanks to using a wide piece of wood and a grinder).   The only problem now is finding a place for it on the boat.