I’m headed back to Roxia today after two months away. Roxia has been in the care of Brett Hensler and staff at Bundaberg Marina. By the time I get there, she will have new bottom paint, PropSpeed, a new PSS shaft seal and main cutlass bearing.  I have a number of projects to complete before the arrival of Nordhavn salesman extraordinaire Devin Zwick in a week. Devin and I will take Roxia south to Brisbane to load onto Yacht Express. Here’s the project I kept busy with while away:

Roxia Sign Boards- Because Roxia is named the same as my grandparents 40′ Wheeler, I wanted to try to tie the two eras together.  My son-in-law Bobby matched the gold leaf typestyle on  the transom of the original Roxia by hand drawing. Then my son Will digitized the letters so I could print them the 4″ size I wanted. Overall size turned out 6″ by 28″. My goal was to make the signboard look hand carved so not too perfect and a little old fashioned. Someday I may write all the details how to achieve this result. In a nutshell I have about 40 hours in it from milling rough sawn teak to the dimensions, hand carving the letters, creating “crinkle” finish gold and finally 10 coats of varnish (6 on the back). For now the pictures here will have to do. Suffice it to say it would never make sense to pay someone to make these because it ended up about $16 per square inch! I wanted to be able to remove the signs to refinish so I used Weld-Mount ¼”-20 female standoffs and silicone bronze flathead bolts.

Roxia Sign Boards