Yacht Were You Thinking?: An A-Z of Boat Names Good and Bad

By Jonathan Eyers

Naming a boat is as personal as naming a baby (even if few male skippers would risk telling the wife that). The culmination of many years of dreaming and penny pinching, the purchase of a boat of any size is a huge event for any sailor, and with that comes serious naming pressure. Many boatowners have a secret fear that someone else got their brilliantly original name first – or ruined it forever by reducing its reputation to snigger-worthy opprobrium. Sometimes it's so difficult to name a boat that skippers are desperate enough to ask the sorts of people who think Boaty McBoatface would be a good choice…

The perfect gift for any skipper or would-be skipper, and featuring hundreds of common and uncommon names, this entertaining little book will answer perhaps the most important question new owners should ask themselves: what will this name say about me? And as everyone knows, once you've named a boat, you never ever change it, so it also answers the question: what is my boat name saying about me right now?

Names will be categorised (and listed alphabetically within these chapters) as to:
- Populist (helpfully yacht insurers release ranked lists of popular names each year, which has revealed some very interesting trends)
- Don't Even Go There (they might be uncommon these days, but sometimes there's a good reason for that)
- Pun Intended (some reveal a classic wit, others reveal just how many desperate unfunny dullards there are sailing around in yachts called Seas the Day)
- A Bit of Pedigree (good names – but probably too classy for you to get away with copying them)
- Common as Muck (bad names – Moondancer, Wave Catcher and others that sound like names from a bad children's novel: where they come from, why they're bad, and how to avoid inventing another)
- Too Much Information (why using a boat to celebrate a bonus/retirement/divorce/second wife tends to be a bad idea a few months down the road)
- The Devil's Own (don't tempt fate by calling your boat Invincible, as the Royal Navy did each time the last one sank/exploded – plus other superstition-violating names)

With fascinating history, a fair bit of psychology and a lot of humour, this is the essential guide for all would-be boat owners, and anyone looking for a dad-type gift on Father's Day or Christmas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781472944382

Jonathan Eyers

Jonathan Eyers is a commissioning editor at Adlard Coles and Conway. He is the author of four books of non-fiction and the children's novel, The Thieves of Pudding Lane.

Book preview

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By the same author

Non-fiction

Don’t Shoot the Albatross! Nautical Myths and Superstitions

How to Snog a Hagfish! Disgusting Things in the Sea

Final Voyage: The World’s Worst Maritime Disasters

Fiction

The Thieves of Pudding Lane

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Contents

   Introduction

1 Pun Intended

2 Common as Muck

3 A Bit of Pedigree

4 Don’t Even Go There

5 Word Piracy

6 Myths, Legends and Gods

7 The Devil’s Own

   Acknowledgements

   Index

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What’s in a Name?

Boaty McBoatface invited the non-sailing public of Great Britain to have a good laugh at those of us who didn’t actually need a good reason to take to the water to get away from them in the first place. Naming a boat suddenly became a joke among people who would gleefully point out that only teenage boys (and assorted manchildren) name their cars.

But there’s a reason Second World War air crews used to name their planes, too. These weren’t just vehicles or machines, and a name wasn’t just a romantic affectation. The crew’s lives were metaphorically in their plane’s hands, and a name afforded her due appreciation and respect, acknowledging her role and importance. She wasn’t a beast of burden – she had responsibilities to the men who flew her.

The same is true of a boat or a ship. A unique registration number would do for the purposes of insurance companies, paper-loving government bureaucrats and, of course, coastguard and rescue services. But a number would be soulless, denying a vessel an identity. A name can capture a boat’s spirit and personality, and acknowledges that she is more than just a floating platform that can be tacked or gybed in various directions.

Yacht insurance companies are good for at least one thing (besides enriching themselves off the back of wobbly-rigging worries, that is): they provide the hard data about which are the most popular registered boat names each year.

With over 12 million private boats owned in the US, another million in the UK, and millions more along the coasts of Europe, this data could come particularly in handy for anyone convinced they’ve come up with a highly personal name, but who really should know that there are thousands of other Libertys out there already.

This book explores names that are very popular (and perhaps too popular) and names that are very rare (and perhaps for good reason). It features famous vessels with equally illustrious skippers as well as boats with unique names you may wish you had thought of first. Ultimately the book will answer perhaps the most important question boat owners should ask themselves: what does this name say about me?

All other considerations aside, however, there’s only one thing a new owner really needs to bear in mind when naming (or renaming) their boat: the possibility that you might, at some point in the future, need to issue a distress signal.

‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, this is sailing yacht Shoot Low They’re Riding Chickens, Shoot Low They’re Riding Chickens, Shoot Low They’re Riding Chickens…’ is going to take up enough of your precious time as it is, but if water’s already up to your ankles when you press that DSC button, and you’re then asked to spell out the name using the phonetic alphabet, let’s be honest, you’ll have sunk long before you even get to the first Charlie.

And then you, and your seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time boat name, will enter the pantheon of unfortunate anecdotes guffawed over at every yacht-club bar from Hong Kong to Miami.

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If you think the stern of your boat is a good place to advertise to your sailing mates how funny – or unfunny – you are, then treat yourself to a pun. Boat names don’t get any more divisive than these. To some, the pun is a form of wit lower even than sarcasm. The more polite will pass no comment at all on a strikingly unoriginal name they have seen a dozen times before. Some of these puns are perennially popular boat names; the better ones, the more original ones, are rare – and actually can be quite witty and clever. Everything else aside, puns are a good way to indulge in a little cheeky innuendo, hiding the sauciness in plain sight so that when you get a dirty look from the marina puritans, you can quite innocently claim it’s all in their own filthy minds.

A Crewed Interest

One of many boat names to allude to the financial blight you may have endured to get her, and one of the cleverer puns. Overstretching the borrowing to pay for a new boat is, of course, something any financial adviser worth his sea salt will warn you off. Plenty of boats were sold off quickly and (too) cheaply after the financial crisis of 2008 to pay off loans and stave off repossession. Although this is a less bland name than Overdraft, a better alternative might perhaps be Loan Ranger (see here).

Aquadisiac

More original than Aquaholic (see below), though it will prompt the obvious question about what is the real object of your lust. Your pontoon neighbour will wonder if it’s your wife. Your wife will worry it’s not.

Aquaholic

With the exception of 2002, when Liberty (see here) and Freedom (see here) emerged from nowhere (or from Lower Manhattan) to become the most common boat names in the world, in most years the two inexplicably popular names that vie for top ranking are both particularly cringeworthy puns: Seas the Day (see here) and Aquaholic.

What would choosing either of these names say about you? Other sailors tend to categorise the type of person who would pick them as someone who doesn’t know their leech from their luff or their clews from their cleats, and is new enough to yachting not to know they aren’t being clever or original or funny. Like most stereotypes, somewhere within it is a knot of truth.

In any large marina you are probably not going to be the only Aquaholic, so you must be prepared to be known as Aquaholic with the 1980s colour scheme or Aquaholic with the loud woman. Don’t know which Aquaholic has the loud woman? It’s probably you, then.

Aqualibrium

Perhaps the best of the Aqua-based puns, and one that requires little wrenching of the English language. From physics to economics to just being able to stand up without falling over, the equilibrium is that point in the middle where all the influences trying to pull in one direction or another are perfectly balanced, so that none gets to dominate. A fine metaphor for sailing and, as puns go, a suitable name for a boat.

Aquasition

Another of the better Aqua-based puns, ruined for ever by the fact that the most famous owner of a boat named Aquasition was Canadian businessman Bernard Ebbers. As CEO of WorldCom he acquired 60 other companies to build one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, and in 1999 was on the cusp of one final merger that would have been the largest in American history. Each acquisition increased the value of his personal stockholdings, and he had fingers in many corporate pies, including yachting companies. He is currently serving 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy.

Baits Motel

Quite a witty name spotted in the US on the back of a boat used primarily to go fishing. The Bates Motel was of course the Californian motel run by Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film (and Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel), Psycho. If you’re staying aboard overnight, maybe don’t use the shower.

Bankruptsea

This joke about how much you have spent on the new boat might be funnier on the stern of a very small boat than on a very large one. A less common variation is Banchorupcy.

Catatonic

Presumably skippers who choose this name don’t really mean to suggest that the boat represents an unresponsive stupor. It’s probably better suited to a catamaran if you’re reaching for a pun. The wrenched-English version Cat-A-Tonic might also hint that sailing is the tonic for the everyday drudge that leaves you in a state of stupefied torpor.

Dun Workin

Also spotted as Dun Werkin (both variants may be one word or two), this is the nautical equivalent of the house name Dun Roamin (or Dunroamin), of which there must be two or three in any village in the south of England. Dun Workin suffers from the same lack of originality, to the extent whereby her sniggering new owner, glowing with an optimistically engorged sense of his own wit, can order pre-printed decals for the name online, without the hassle or expense of getting a unique decal printed specially.

What will other yacht owners think when they find they now share a pontoon jetty with Dun Workin? Even before they meet you, they will probably envisage a newly retired skipper (and, most likely, one who refers to himself as a ‘retiree’ rather than a ‘pensioner’), someone with too much time to hang around the marina, awash with tales of how their Yachtmaster course is going (even though they doubt you will ever go more than 10 miles down the coast). It might be just envy. It might be accurate.

For Play

A deliciously salacious pun, this naughty name will raise a few eyebrows among the more puritanical critics of innuendo in the yacht-club bar. It’s one of the easier ones, however, to which you can plead innocence.

Gypsea

One of the most popular boat names in 2000 (long enough ago for this one now to seem more original again), Gypsea captures the free-spirited, roving wanderlust (see here) of the traveller, going where the mood takes him and living the self-determined life of the nomad (see here).

The perhaps more obvious Sea Gypsy is actually less common as a boat name (and Ocean Gypsy even less so – presumably one only for long-distance cruisers). Various peoples around the world are referred to as sea gypsies, such as the Moken of Indonesia, who usually come ashore only during the monsoon season, and the Tanka, who traditionally live on boats along the Chinese coast.

Happy Ours

This was one of the most frequently chosen boat names of 2016. Other less common variations on the same theme include Idle Ours, After Ours and the perhaps less obsessively punning All Ours – but the options are potentially endless, almost all of them suggesting that time spent aboard one’s boat is time well spent.

Hard-A-Tack

A rather clever pun spotted on a boat sailing out of New York in the mid-1980s – although as with naming your boat after anything that could hurt her, it’s probably best to avoid naming her after anything that could hurt you too. Nobody knows whether his lack of prescience left fate open to ground the skipper of Hard-A-Tack permanently with a cardiac arrest.

Key of Sea

Quite