Hex Grid Failure

If you've read some previous posts, you'll remember that I was trying to make a hexagon gridded surface.  After several hours of researching fabrics and paints, and cutting and taping freezer paper, I finally got to the moment of truth.  As the title of this posts suggests, it was a failure. 
The spray primer absorbed into the duck cloth, so instead of nice clean lines, I got blobby messes.  The freezer paper started peeling up as soon as it got wet, which made the blobs worse. I let it dry and tried to play a game on it. 
Besides being ugly, gridding Galleys and Galleons didn't work well for me.  In order to get the longer ships I'd designed to fit in one hex, they had to be 3 inches between parallel sides.  Having such large hexes made it easy for collisions and boarding actions because both ships could occupy the same tile.  The 3" grids essentially shrunk the playable surface of the game.  Suddenly ships firing at 2x long range could reach half of the map.  Having the grids did make wind direction very easy.  There is no discrepancy about what setting the sails should be at, or if an enemy ship is in range. 
In order to get the playing surface to a manageable size, I'd have to shrink down the hexes to 2".  This would present two options; either reduce the size of the models, or have a single model occupy multiple hexes. I haven't had time to think out all the problems of having a unit occupy multiple hexes, but I do know that reducing the models by 50% will certainly reduce the likelihood that I ever paint them.
Spray painting on duck cloth might work for some, but I won't be trying it again.  I might try using my wife's Cricut to cut iron on vinyl.  The lines would be very clean, but it took 12 sheets of cutting to make the spray painting stencil, and that much vinyl would get expensive.  The goal was to make it functional without being real expensive. By the time I buy new cloth and 12 sheets of vinyl, it's approaching the cost of a vinyl gaming mat. 
Now accepting ideas for a 36x54 piece of navy blue duck cloth with gray blobs all over it.