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Choosing a boat name


CLIPPER

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Well, I finally named my weekender. I am naming her "Violet's Bloom"

When I was 8 years old my Mother (Violet) died of cancer. I grew up believing that If I wanted something bad enough, I would have to make it happen. I wanted to learn to sail, and I've wanted to build a boat for several years so.....

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I name my Cris Craft "Makin' Waves". I had a buddy who was a pilot at the time. When you asked him had been doing he would reply he had been boring holes in the sky. So when someone asked me what I had been up to I could reply "Makin' Waves"

Still thinking on a name for my CS-20 I am planning.

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Seems to me there's two good ways to name a boat. One is you can pick something that reflects the sheer delight of "being a boat." This is the kind of name that you can imagine your boat announcing proudly or happily to all the other boats "Hi gang, my name is ..."

The other, like Jan has, is you name it to honor or recall a person or personal passage that lies at the core of your own story.

Charlie Girl II is named for my wife, as was the original Charlie Girl.

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They say that when naming a kid, you should do a doorstep test - you stand on your back doorstep, yell the name as loud as you can, and see how foolish you feel. I suspect you need to do something similar with a boat.

I've got my half built 14 ft Yellowtail sitting in the shed, un-named. But then again, I'm not working on her at the moment (got a dink to finish), so I'm guessing that a name will come once I start.

My little 8 footer is called Redback. The design is Welsford's 'Tender Behind', which he admits was a play on words. I decided to take the play a bit further - there's a famous Aussie song about a man who went to the dunny one night, and was bitten on the bum by a Redback (poisonous spider). The two sort of went together nicely.

Richard

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My Weekender is going to be the Ruth Paxmore, for a character in James Michener's Chesapeake: She was the wife of the Quaker carpenter who didn't know how to build boats but learned by doing it. For me, that seems somehow appropriate.

My inspiration for this goes back to late 1989, when I was doing work for a client that required me to spend several days in Newport News, VA. After visiting Colonial Williamsburg, the rest of my spare time was spent prowling marinas. I ran across a drop-dead beautiful 32-foot restored skipjack (refitted as a pleasure boat) named the Rosalind J. Steed from the same book. It was for sale--$12,000--and I had the money but didn't want to solve the problem of getting her trucked overland to Missouri. I've kicked myself from time to time ever since.

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I named the weekender 'Opus' as it was my first work. When I get around to building another it will be 'Opus II' and so on. The O'Day I refused to give the Opus name as I didn't build it.

I did have some fun in naming it 'Second Star'. In the Disney movie 'Peter Pan' at the end there's a shot of Peter sailing the 'Jolley Roger' (Hook's ship) off into the clouds towards the second star to the right and on 'til morning. I always thought that was cool. Besides SWMBO says that I will never grow up. I think she meant that in a good way(?).

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