A Lot of Weather and a Lot of Stripes

You could say a lot about the weather in Texas, and you could also say that they get a lot of weather here too. Yesterday I looked at my "to do" list and realized that there were a number of tasks I could complete if I just parked a few of my boats under the tin roof of the boat house.
As the hail storm approached, I had my Texas manager park those boats where they'd be dry, and today I went about checking off those tasks on my "to do" list.
Once all the critical items had been done, I got to play around with my pet project: painting stripes on the oars.

In the weather department, we had thunderous lightning and hard pouring rain.  The boathouse roof was rattling.  It got so loud that I couldn't hear the radio any more.

Then...hail.

It was amazing. There's nothing quite like hail on a tin roof.

Back to striping:
I brought a simple template with me when I came out, and have chosen a few different widths for my chevron stripes.


When I came out here in January, I discovered a whole bunch of oars that needed help; many of them were splitting in different places in the blade area, and all needed major varnishing.
These were glued and clamped, sanded, and given seven coats of varnish.
Next I brushed four coats of white on two of them and all received their bold chevron stripes.

My standard approach has been to measure and mark, apply masking tape in a meticulous manner, and then paint the stripes with concern only for even coverage.

Today, after having striped three remi in that way, I got bold and brushed on with no measuring or masking - just holding the template in place and freehand brushing.

I could say that I felt like I was ready for the challenge, but the truth was that I was in a hurry and felt like taking a chance.
I think it came out fairly well.

There's no doubt in my mind that somewhere out there, someone is reading this and saying: 
"Oh come on! I brush stripes freehand all the time!" 

They're probably saying it in Venetian dialect too, but for me it was a first, and if I can find the guy who brushes freehand - I'll gladly take a lesson from them.