Sailors can be a superstitious lot. So what's your beliefs in changing the name of a vessel?

I know of people who have done it. I know of people who won't. And I know of people who have done it only after swimming around the boat 3 times and one, who had a complete renaming ceremony.

I like to consider myself non superstitious, but why take a chance right (cisco, I'm not sure what to put at the end here. I've made a statement followed by a question. Do I put a question mark?)

Have you changed you boats name, and how did you go about it?

When I bought Warana11, there was half a bottle of very old vodka in the grog cabinet. Upon seing it another yachtie from Blairgowrie said it's purpose was if I wanted to change the name of my boat I had to skull the half that was left, walk backwards around the deck, and if i hadn't fallen in I could go ahead with the name change..............because the bottle is half empty i guess some previous owner had given it a go and failed!

Hey cisco, any other way to add a dramatic pause, other than a row of dots..............just let me know.

Uhmmm ................................................................................What?

I'm not superstitious so I just changed the name from whatever was illegible on the side to "Tardis" I named
the boat after the nickname of my other half, she's one of these people who's bigger on the inside than she
is on the outside (5'.0") y'know one who's greater than the sum of their parts. The boat has not objected !!!!.

Re:- boat names and changing them.

It is a hard one to pick. I know a bloke who has had over 50 different boats and I think he changed the name on nearly all of them. He usually made a good profit on each of them but did trip a few times. Whether it bought him bad luck or not is debatable. One thing I know is that I am glad I am not him. He is a total schizo.

I am on my 7th yacht and only changed the name of one of them which turned out to be a total financial disaster.

1. "Roulette". A Spencer Javelin 14 ft skiff. It was a punt when I bought her and it was always a punt that you might have a swim when you took her out.

2. "Kahlua'. A Spencer Adrian 24 ft keeler/weekend cruiser on Auckland Harbour. Beautiful name and beautiful drink that opens legs.

3. "ENVY II". A Peterson 42 ft ally IOR 2 tonner in survey charter yacht. Fabulous yacht with an enviable race record. A financial disaster because I went chartering.

4. "Pancho". A Windrush Wildfire 23 ft trailer sailor. A rum little boat in the rum city of Bundaberg.

5. "Cisco" A steel Van De Stadt 34. Originaly called "Onsala" after the town up some fijord in Sweden where the previous owner grew up. I couldn't go with that name and I had had "Pancho", so why not "Cisco". I owned it for 7 years, never got her in the water and ended up giving her away after she was flooded. So I guess you could say that was a bad luck name change.

6. "Cicely June" The very first S&S 34 to come to Aus. I rescued her from dereliction in the Burnett River and she was known as "Astrid". I later found a plaque in one of the lockers engraved with "Cicely June" competed in the 1969 Sydney-Hobart against Ted Heath's "Morning Cloud" coming in around 16 th. I started calling her CJ or Sea Jay. I hauled her out and had her on the hard for 3 years waiting for my partner in her to come over from W.A. I ended up selling her for about a $4,000 loss. That was not a lucky name change either even though it was by proxy one might say.

7. "Second Wind" A Lotus 9.2 and I am not going to mess with that name. There are a few around with that name but I am OK with that as the name fits my situation and characterises the boat for me.


Is it bad luck to change the name of a yacht? It is open to debate.

I have a bit of a tradition of naming my boats "Two Dogs" next was "another Two Dogs" but don't mind the name of this one so I'll keep it but always completed a renaming ceremony.

Guitz,
Was the bottle half empty or half full. Seems to be inportant.

When I purchased my present boat My misses was keen to rename her.
I stuck with the superstitious stuff and we kept the original name.
With a bit of research it turns out she is on name number three so we might as well have changed it.

Select to expand quote

Franrick said..
Guitz,
Was the bottle half empty or half full. Seems to be inportant.

Definitely half empty!

I wanted to change the name as soon as I bought the boat "Impulse" but I just can't come up with anything.
S and S 34s have a tradition of having "morning" as a part of their name but I have just about given up ands Impulse is starting to grow on me

Select to expand quote

andy59 said..
I wanted to change the name as soon as I bought the boat "Impulse" but I just can't come up with anything.
S and S 34s have a tradition of having "morning" as a part of their name but I have just about given up ands Impulse is starting to grow on me

Do you not want to follow tradition, or you cant think of anything original (for and S and S) with morning in it.

There is a catamaran I am very keen on but not yet ready to make a move on it, and the chances are good it will be gone before I am in a position to do so. But I just cant get my head around the name of it.

the only "rule" that i know of is ........................ if you want to change the name of the vessel, she must be out of the water when that happens .


i did this once , but was too scared to remove the name completely ,so i just added an extra word the the original name !!


cisco i did edit a couple of punctuation issues , but it got to much to fix it completely

Select to expand quote

Guitz said..
When I bought Warana11, there was half a bottle of very old vodka in the grog cabinet. Upon seing it another yachtie from Blairgowrie said it's purpose was if I wanted to change the name of my boat I had to skull the half that was left, walk backwards around the deck, and if i hadn't fallen in I could go ahead with the name change..............because the bottle is half empty i guess some previous owner had given it a go and failed!

Hey cisco, any other way to add a dramatic pause, other than a row of dots..............just let me know.

Warana11? Crikey?......What happened to the first 10?

Select to expand quote

andy59 said..
I wanted to change the name as soon as I bought the boat "Impulse" but I just can't come up with anything.
S and S 34s have a tradition of having "morning" as a part of their name but I have just about given up ands Impulse is starting to grow on me

Andy,

Morning Impulse has a sense of ambiguity that I could live with.

When I purchased my H28 there was two Erakor's mine Erakor 11 I think if that was not the case she would have been left and I just let my sons decide what they wanted to call her " Driftwood "

Select to expand quote

Toph said..

andy59 said..
I wanted to change the name as soon as I bought the boat "Impulse" but I just can't come up with anything.
S and S 34s have a tradition of having "morning" as a part of their name but I have just about given up ands Impulse is starting to grow on me

Do you not want to follow tradition, or you cant think of anything original (for and S and S) with morning in it.

I wanted to follow tradition at first but just haven't come up really liked.

Ha ha LMY I hadnt thought of that one, nearly as good as Morning Glory.

Hi all

i am not sure about getting rid of everything with the old name of the boat on it or you will have bad luck because mine had a name change (from Aqua-fae to Addiction) when she was probably around 6 years old but for the next 23 years had the original name on a race series plaque on the compression post in the cabin and Addiction on her stern until I bought her and returned her back to her original name of Aqua-Fae which I prefer

As far as I know she never had any drama's throughout her life due to having both names on her

Regards Don

A boat has a soul and the boats soul should be reflected in the name. I have owned more than 30 boats all named Anaconda. In the instances where the boats had a former name that is respected as an integral part of the boats history. When under my custody the boat becomes Anaconda.
If you choose to rename a boat then only you can know if that is the right thing to do for that boat. No need for alcohol ceremonies or obliteration of the boats past identity. The Sea Gods can look into your soul and determine if you are worthy of being a custodian of a boat.

When I bought my current yacht part of the agreement was to change the name. The previous owners kept the name for their new boat. I named her Ramona because all my sailing boats have had song titles.

hey andy
what about "Morning Impulse"

Select to expand quote

FreeRadical said..

Guitz said..
When I bought Warana11, there was half a bottle of very old vodka in the grog cabinet. Upon seing it another yachtie from Blairgowrie said it's purpose was if I wanted to change the name of my boat I had to skull the half that was left, walk backwards around the deck, and if i hadn't fallen in I could go ahead with the name change..............because the bottle is half empty i guess some previous owner had given it a go and failed!

Hey cisco, any other way to add a dramatic pause, other than a row of dots..............just let me know.

Warana11? Crikey?......What happened to the first 10?

Ha Ha! ok,ok, i was lazy on the keyboard and typed eleven instead of roman numerals II, BUT there is definitely a story there...............in researching Warana II, I came across a great travel story featuring the first Warana.

www.amazon.com/Warana-Voyage-Australian-Nuclear-Protest/dp/1460960904

as the story goes;
"In 1973, Brian Crawford was a 25-year-old hippie out to see the world and have adventures. After two nearly two years on a schooner in North Atlantic gales, he was looking for warmer water. He went to the Kingdom of Tonga, where his brother was training Peace Corps volunteers. Although he loved the people and country of Tonga, his tourist visa expired and he had to leave. With no money, his options were few. Then he found a yacht that would take him on as navigator - Warana, the Australian nuclear protest vessel, bound for Mururoa atoll in French Polynesia, to try to prevent the French from testing more nuclear weapons there. He joined a disillusioned and discontented crew of misfits, all of whom soon gave up and returned home. With the skipper Peter Sturgess and a crew of American hippies rounded up from waterfront bars, they began the voyage back to Australia. Visiting Fiji, New Hebrides............"

[URL= .html]

Select to expand quote

Ramona said...
When I bought my current yacht part of the agreement was to change the name. The previous owners kept the name for their new boat. I named her Ramona because all my sailing boats have had song titles.

Ramona by Bob Dylan? I love that song

I don't believe all the superstitious crap but I do believe in the power of rituals. When we renamed ours (which had a crapper name than the one we chose and had already been renamed) we did the following:

- walked around the deck 3 times without touching anything to ward off MOBs
- swam around the boat 3 times naked to ward off shark attacks (including shark attacks whilst naked!)
- stroked all the seacocks 3 times to ward off sinkings
- stroked the engine to ward off engine problems
- hugged the mast to ward off dismasting
- then drank some wine and ate to invoke good times.

It was fun and served the dual purpose of reminding us what's important (maintenance and fun, not superstition). On further reflection, it may be better to walk around the deck 3 times holding on the whole time.

Speaking of stroking all the seacocks 3 times, I heard a funny saying the other day.............

Arrrrrr.....someone's put sand in the Captain's Vaseline....it'll be a rough passage around the Horn tonight, Arrrrr....

Select to expand quote

andy59 said..

Ramona said...
When I bought my current yacht part of the agreement was to change the name. The previous owners kept the name for their new boat. I named her Ramona because all my sailing boats have had song titles.

Ramona by Bob Dylan? I love that song

No Ramona by The Bachelors

My previous boat was named Breakaway as soon as I seen her I choose to name her Sea princess! I was going to name my new boat Sea princess 2 but ICON kind of stuck! ICON has AIRCON !

I renamed my boat (34ft Catalina originally imported from the US) from STEEN (what the hell does that ,mean?) to Allana ( my names' Allan) - no ceremonies, but good times since.
Guess she likes her new name....

Part of the re naming ceremony is "Polishing the Golden Rivet" isn't it???

There are many ceremonies that have been performed to make sure you have good luck when changingate name of a boat. This is one I particularly liked, and was all set to do it when I had decided to change the name from Dulcamara to ......... Well, that was the problem, I hadn't chosen a name yet. She was originally Dollar Bird II, but was renamed by the owners two before me for some reason.

www.boatsafe.com/renaming-boat/

I bought this topic up purely for discussion. I don't actually have a boat I wish to change the name on yet. I liked my (hopefully soon to be ex) cruisers name, not that I have a clue what it means though.

I have decided when/if the time comes, I will swim around the boat backwards and naked while repeating the name in between swigging from a bottle of rum. It aint gonna be a pretty sight though.