Name That Boat

Having acquired our lovely new (old) Amel Maramu it was time to consider whether a name change was necessary. It’s considered unlucky to rename a boat, but she’s currently named Sea love!

We set about throwing names into a used yogurt pot, thoroughly cleaned and dried of course and decided that we’d bung in suggestions throughout January.

On 1^st February we poured the folded paper suggestions onto the saloon table and set about laying out all 53 for viewing. First thing of note was that G’waan was not amongst them! G’waan (go on) has been the first mates preferred boat name for a few years. I feel an explanation is necessary.

Father Ted was an Irish comedy series from back in the 1990’s and one of the characters was housekeeper Mrs Doyle. She’d appear now and again asking the resident priests if they’d like a cuppa tea. More often than not they wouldn’t, but Mrs Doyle was persistent and would continue to badger them by saying “ah, go on! Go on, go on, go on” and “ah ya will, ya will, ya will.” When spoken with an Irish (Craggy Island) accent, go on sounds like g’waan!

The first mate thought it would be hilarious to hail the local marina or coast guard with “G’waan.” Maybe I should explain further!

Standard marine VHF protocol is to repeat the name of the station you’re hailing and your vessel 3 times, when initiating contact. For example, “Marina Lagos, Marina Lagos, Marina Lagos, this is G’waan, G’waan, G’waan”. First Mate thought this connection to Mrs Doyle would be hilarious and even better, someone, somewhere, might respond with “ah, ya will, ya will, ya will.”

Despite not being a hot pot contender, it would’ve been a mistake to discard it totally at this stage.

There were some belters amongst the pack. Ipanema was the name of the first boat we ever sailed together and we really liked the name. Aurora was another contender as was Valinor and Even Star.

There were a few comedy inclusions too. Boog, for example, or Jelly B, a reference to the two jellyfish stings I’ve had so far. Shenanigan was another corker. Just type “how to play the shenanigan” into your search engine and marvel at the result.

We had quite a good selection of names, so why o why didn’t we simply choose one? Well, it all felt a bit of an anti-climax to be honest and while there were some good names, we weren’t convinced we had the right one.

After a week or so with no progress, I wrote out the first 4 letters of both our names and started playing around with them. “Arse” was the first name to emerge from the jumble of letters as was “sea rats” and “vesta.” There were quite a few by the time I’d finished and I started reading them out to the first mate. Each one I read received the same response “NO” and I began to think we weren’t getting anywhere until I read out one of the suggestions with the fewest letters, to which the response was “I like that.”

It just so happened that I liked it too and so we agreed that we’d finally got the name for our new boat. It is short, almost impossible to mispronounce and as an added bonus it’s a palindrome!

TTFN

Captain Mac