Skipper's Boat-Building Blog
Comment What do you call yours? The naming of boats is a serious matter Another important thing to do before anything else is to name the boat. Very important I think and doesn't involve buying anything or humping stuff around the garage so, definitely has to be done now. Boat names are very personal and a little strange after all we don't name our cars or bikes so why should we label our boats? I think of some of the boat names I have seen ... I don't want to dwell on what it says about me but the first one that comes to mind is 'Blow Job'. That was on a dinghy somewhere and it's very apt but I don't think I could carry that off myself. 'What have you been up to lately son?' 'Well Dad, I've built myself a dinghy' 'Very good lad. And what do you call it?' ... The next one that springs, sloth like, to mind is 'Sosueme'. That I saw on a yacht in Ireland and it just made me picture the owner as some terrible con-man who'd got the money for the yacht in some despicable way and didn't care if the world knew it. I do enjoy those two-part names shared between a yacht and its tender and I particularly remember seeing a dinghy called 'Squeak ... t/t Bubble'. They make me smile. T/t, by the way means 'tender to'. 'Squeak' would be a great name for a mouse dinghy but mine is a 'pram' design and 'Silver Cross' is a bit clumsy. After some mental gymnastics (like Geoff Capes on the parallel bars – oh gawd, I'm showing my age now) I finally decide on 'Slow Rada' and I think I'll leave you to work out why. Now, I wonder if I've got to go through some ritualistic ceremony before I can actually paint it on the boat? Plenty of time to work that out, I'll need a boat first. Next