We have finally decided on a new name for our Fairweather Mariner: Ayala

The previous owner named her Windbound, but we wanted to give the boat a name with more personality and significance for us. Also, given our international travel plans, Ayala is a name that can be pronounced around much of the world easily. Ayala has several meanings that resonate with us… most importantly, we got married on this boat while moored in Ayala Cove at Angel Island!

The old name was painted on, so we used Easy Off Oven Cleaner to remove it. We sprayed it on, let it sit for 5 minutes, and then scrubbed each letter. As we expected, the Easy Off left some yellowing on the transom where sprayed, but it came off easily with distilled white vinegar. Unfortunately, we were not able to remove every trace of the old letters. We tried a second pass of scrubbing, then buffing, then wet sanding, and none of them had the effect we were hoping for.

It took about 5 months from when we removed the old name to when we put on the new name – thanks to paperwork, international travel, and getting married. In the future we plan to do a big, fancy design taking up more of the transom in the future, but for now we have our nice vinyl lettering from BoatUS, which will last until we finish changing the transom layout.