BY BARB THOMSON
Special to Black Press
We loved the boat but loathed the name.
The first thing I did when we bought our sailboat was ask Google: “How do you remove a boat’s name?”
Multiple answers depended on how the name was applied to the hull, and since this was paint, not a decal, I set off to buy a list of chemicals, none of which worked as well as Easy Off Oven Cleaner followed by a vinegar rinse: spray, wait, rinse, gone. And why haven’t I told you the boat’s name? Because Poseidon has forever erased that awful name from his Ledger of the Deep and neither one of us ever wants to hear it again.
Sea lore warns that renaming a boat is bad luck unless you calm the wrath of Poseidon, who keeps a record of every vessel’s name. Steps include invoking Poseidon’s favour by saying something like, “I implore you in your graciousness to expunge for all time from your records and recollection (the old name) which has ceased to be an entity in your kingdom.” From the deck of the boat, you pour champagne into the water and then prepare to address the gods of the four winds, with each receiving another watery champagne offering.
Now for the new name. If there’s any champagne left, enjoy it while you thumb through a great book by Jonathan Eyers called Yacht Were You Thinking? An A-Z of Boat Names Good and Bad. Along with the meaning attached to each name, Eyers includes examples like: Shoot Low They’re Riding Chickens and the cheeky best, Ship Happens and its dingy named Piece of Ship. Is this a name you can quickly repeat on VHF radio and spell out using the phonetic alphabet before the boat sinks?
In a memoir titled Seamanship, A Voyage Along the Wild Coasts of the British Isles, Adam Nicholson explores the deeper, more personal experience of renaming his boat Auk, a 42-foot wooden ketch. Named for a type of sea bird, because “all exist so bravely and buoyantly in their gale-swept oceanic world,” Nicholson believes the renaming can also reveal the sailor: “It is often said that a man’s boat is an extension of himself, but that is not quite true. A man’s boat is more an instrument by which his self is exposed.”
And so, we scroll websites and ponder lists, looking outside for what is named within us.
Barb Thomson is a boating enthusiast who writes regular columns for the Comox Valley Record.
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