I've pinched this topic from the venerable Drascombe Association News. Boats are personal so their names often have interesting origins, reflecting the owner's outlook and background.
To kick off with, the reasons for calling my BR20 Gladys are multiple. Gladius is Latin for sword, (think "gladiator") so as a Bayraider there is a tenuous link, perhaps slightly aggressive, with a weapon. Gladioli flowering plants are named because the shape of their leaves are similar to swords.
On a friendlier note, Gladys is a girl's name that seems to be associated with Wales and of course Bayraiders are made in Wales. Gladys seems to me slightly quirky, old fashioned in style and perhaps unusual – not a bad description of a Bayraider. Most importantly to me, it's in affectionate memory to my Aunty Gladys - who was outwardly quite respectable but I suspect enjoyed quite a lot of fun we were not told about.
Dare you divulge the origin of your boat's name?
Matthew
BR20 Gladys
Turaco is the name of our favourite bird when we lived in Nairobi, Kenya, decades ago. We had a small forest at the bottom of our tiny garden and it would make regular visits to a giant fig tree there. It has a green body and red wings, as does my Bayraider.
(Good game, this!)
My father in law named a boat "Amchar", after my daughters, Amy and Charlotte. (Didn't quite work, did it.) Two girls later I named my Cardigan Bay Lugger "Four Sisters" to save accusations of favoritism. I like the vaguely 'fishing boat' resonance it has. (Like "Three Brothers"?)
A classically minded friend said "Um...Shouldn't it be 'SEVEN Sisters'?" thinking of the Pleiades.
"NO!" said my wife, vehemently, thinking of something else entirely.
My late father was a shipwright by trade and 50 years ago he built a fleet of a dozen 'Gremlin' dinghys for our family and colleagues to sail on a pond at Killingholme gas works. The design was basically a gunter rigged pram dinghy similar to an 'Optimist',and it was the biggest boat in length capable of being built from a single 8ft sheet of marine plywood.
The first two were named 'Gribble' and 'Teredo' as the curse of shipwrights, wood boring crustacea and marine worms. My boat was called 'Numbskulll' with an eponymous figurehead on the prow.
Can anyone guess the etymology of the name of my previous boat, a 'Mirror' dinghy called 'Noidr' after its owner. Is it Welsh?
I called my BR20 Gryphon after a pub near Brecon where I have had a few brown mineral waters over the years with a distant relative. I used the archaic spelling "Gryphon" rather then "Griffin" (the name of the pub as "Griffin" is a common name in the corporate scene here.
My previous yachts were an early diagonal strip planked Flying 15 "Ushaia" (one of the first six built in WA), another and later Flying 15, a Hobie Cat and a very old Heron "Methuselah". The latter we sailed on salt lakes near Kalgoorlie in the early 1970's after some very heavy summer rains then up north off the Pilbara coast. Have also crewed on OPYs (other people's yachts) including an S&S34 and Viking 30 on offshore and match racing events.
Nothing so original for me I am afraid.
Gwennol Teifi was the first production model Storm 17 that Swallow Boats made. Living locally and having a passion for West Wales she had to be Called Gwennol Teifi - which is welsh for Teifi Swallow.
Regards
Gareth Rowlands
I learned to sail in a boat called 'Cambridge District' which my siblings and I thought was an almost embarrassingly unromantic name. It recorded the fact that she was a retirement present to my grandfather, from his staff in the Cambridge district of the London and North Eastern Railway before WW2. In 1964 I found myself, as a junior doctor at Addenbrookes Hospital, caring for a retired railway porter who remembered my grandfather as 'a real gennlemun' and recalled, as a 14 year old, putting his pennies in the 'hat' which came round for the gift - 'we bought him a boat: fancy that, but that's what he wanted'. Needless to say, he was no-end chuffed (no rather abstruse pun intended) to hear about my connection with the boat in question.
Some years ago, Pete Greenfield thought it would be fun to have a 'Spot the Silly Boat Name' competition in Water Craft, suggesting that anyone, for example, who saw a pink speedboat called 'Twisted Knickers" should write in. He received a very prim letter (which he published) from someone pointing out that boat names are very personal, and how dare PG make fun..... etc etc (the writer was probably right, but he wasn't half pompous about it). PG immediately retracted and apologised, and there was no competition (which I think is probably a shame). I wrote in to point out that 'Cutty Sark' was a more than respectable ship's name AND had just as much to do with ladies' underwear as did 'Twisted Knickers'.
My first Swallowboat (yes, they were called that then, so there) had to have a musical name - that's just me. So she was 'Cadenza'. My Trouper 12 continued that theme, an attractive name to do with music. (For those who don't know, a cavatina is a solo in an opera, shorter than an aria and with an emphasis on melodic beauty.)
Michael R
I hadn't given a name to any of the boats that I had restored, or built until I was forced to register my Tideway dinghy . The committee asked the question 'What's it called reply- it has no name, again a repeat of the Question - same responce until eventually, exasperated, I called it Nona Me - satisfaction all 'round!
On boat names ,Tony has come up with a great name for a boat Deckie Learner. Trying to find the origin of my Cornish Crabber called Ludwen, I drew a blank . It came from the Isle of Scilly and is neither Cornish or Welsh, there was I think a King Lud any suggestions?
Steve Jones
My Gobhlan Gaoithe is derived from the Scottish Gaelic word for a swallow but also translates back as "bird of the wind". My son Ben is married to Seonaid a gaelic speaker and I hope that in due course the boat will live up in Stornoway with them. I have to admit that when anyone asks me to spell out the name I quickly resort to BRe 25 which is proudly emblazoned on the sails!
Rory C
Marginally off topic, Michael Rogers comments regarding "Silly Boat Names" caused me to recollect a couple from the Western Australia yachting scene.
1. WAFWOM - What A F******* Waste Of Money
2. Krakatini - a reference to the days when yacht races or journeys over here were measured in the number of cans of brown mineral water consumed.
Regards to all, we at last have relief from 40 deg C plus days with some tropical rain off a cyclone out NW from here.
To follow on from Chris's post ..
http://messingaboutinboats.typepad.com/sailing/2007/10/really-stupid-b.html
Some are quite clever, some funny.. a lot not either!
I quite liked 'Sir Oasis of the River'. 'Bow Movement' made me chuckle..
And what do you do when you want to change the pre-existing name? Sacrifice a bottle of 12 yr old..? Or worse ....!
I liked the use of the word 'Aquamoron' by the author of the above link which again made me chuckle - we've all met one..?!
Thanks for the link, Andy! Oh dear!
Of those listed, I liked 'Never Again 2': also (as a medic, I suppose) 'Cirrhosis of the River'.
Someone I knew crewed in the Sydney - Hobart race, on a boat owned by a wealthy plastic surgeon and called 'Nip 'n Tuck'.
Get more days on the water by naming your boat after "The owners agent" as Rob J puts it.
Never a launch goes by without complementary comments on the looks of the sheer stunning lines of my BR20 so if the "other half" is with me you can imagine how proud she must feel that the boat is named with her nickname from me.
Never did like "pushing rock's uphill"
Peter
BR20 Joybells
Good idea Peter to label your boat so as to flatter the "owners agent".
The worst example I think I have seen was thirty years ago when I saw a large sailing cruiser named "Betty's Fur Coat". So wrong on so many levels! I cannot imagine Betty was pleased, a horrible name and no doubt excited attention from the Fashion Police and Animal Rights activists.
Incidentally, after thinking I had chosen an unusual name I discovered Gladys has a widely admired namesake, a grand old lady thames barge called Gladys. I think this association adds lustre to my humble GRP BR20.
Matthew
BR20 Gladys
Daisy Grace was simply my mother's name. I think it sounded nice and boaty as well. I built a tender for her that I call Nellie Grace after her sister. Auntie Nell would be furious to know that she was being towed along behind Daisy!
But my favourite boat name was always a mirror dinghy I saw in Ireland which belonged to a keen young sailor called Ruth. She kept falling out of it. She called it Ruthless...
I typed out a reply at great length and then pressed a wrong button and lost it so if it appears as well as this I apologise. I was interested to see that Julian had named his boat after his mother as I have just done the same thing; having entered my BR 20 for the Sail Caledonia raid I realised that my nameless boat would have to be named, and my wife suggested my mother's names, so the poor thing has had to become Augusta Thomasina. Mother could not abide either name and Augusta was abandoned, and Thomasina morphed through Thomazo to Zazo and ended up as Za. Her father's boat (a rather nice 30 foot bermudan cutter built by Cooper's of Conyer Creek, who more usually built barges) was named Mazilda ie Ma, Za, William (my uncle) and Da. The tender was not named until after my grandparents parted company (what a terrible thing to happen in the thirties) and so became Zawillda !
I think the worst boat name I have come across was my brother's horrible plywood speedboat in the sixties, which he got very cheap and called Wotabargin. Aaaaargh.
Quote from: Charles Scott on 31 Mar 2017, 18:11
I typed out a reply at great length and then pressed a wrong button and lost it so if it appears as well as this I apologise. .
Charles
Construct your posting in another package first e.g. Word, save as you write, use the spell checker as usual, save the document, then copy and paste into the forum, saves a lot of "angst" as I know from a lengthy posting I once lost.
Peter
Hi Chris. Sail Caledonia is a great event and we look forward to meeting you there in Augusta Thomasina. From your photo on the Sail Caledonia website it looks like you may have a sizeable crew.
I shall be crewing for Andrew in his Craic - a near-perfect name for a Swallow boat?
Matthew
BR20 Gladys
Thank you Matthew, and we are much looking forward to it too. The large crew in the photo will be replaced by a crack (not Craic) crew of 3.
Vagabond had nowhere to go when I bought her, so the name seemed appropriate both to that and the wandering for the first few years of her life. Her tender is called Doris, in a rather unkind reference to one of my aunts (now deceased) who had a similar shape and mannerisms. The outboard, being a Mercury, couldn't be called anything other than Freddie and the trailer became Terence, never Terry, as I became aware of its high falutin' ways....And the current car, being from the Czech republic, couldn't be anything other than Martina. So far, nothing else has been named......
Having sailed a "Seafly" class dinghy from my youth, when I bought a Lightning 368 single hander I called it "Seabee". This I thought very clever since "Cb" is the meteorological abbreviation for a cumulonimbus cloud - out of which we get lightning. Unfortunately only other meteorologists saw the connection! When I ordered my BC20 from Matt I wondered about "Sea Swallow" but the name had more or less been taken (at least in Welsh). Then I remembered that "sea swallow" is a sailors' name for the tern seabird, hence my BC20 is called "Seatern".
Referring to Michael's post on the 29th Jan, over this last winter there has been a speedboat called "Knicker Twister" tied to the next jetty upstream from mine. I say "tied" because the owners don't know how to moor a boat and, as I predicted in a warning to them, it sank during the first set of extra high spring tides. Perhaps the name is more than appropriate!
Finally, while monitoring the radios at the Calshot National Coastwatch station we hear many silly, and I would have thought embarrassing, boat names. When naming a boat it's worth remembering that, at some point, you may have to spell it out phonetically over the VHF to the Coast Guard or whoever you are calling; unfortunately if you give your boat a Welsh name you are likely to have to do that rather often!
Peter
Thank you Peter, for pointing out the significance of the importance of phonetically spelling out an apparently Welsh name, pertinent to my last boat 'Noidr' or N O I D R , I had absolutely 'no idea',
honest!
There was a philanthropic teacher, Dai Jones, at Grimsby many years ago, who kept many reprobates off the streets by supplying a string of boats for us to use. They were named sequentially 'Taffy 1', Taffy 2' etcetera. The final boat he bought was the newly introduced 470 Class , which by rights would have been 'Taffy 8', but was called more appropriately 'Taffle', because it was full of bits of string that got tied in knots. As opposed to being full of Welshmen.
Finally I was always under the mistaken impression that when you saw two seabirds together they were bound to be terns. This is because I was taught when cruising out in the Humber that one good tern always deserves another!
And all the nice gulls love a sailor.
A nice topic Matthew.
Ella is named after a favourite cat. The cat was named after Ella Fitzgerald.
The short name appeals (perhaps having to spell it out phonetically); Za (above) excels.
John
Aenbharr is the name of a mythical horse, with the power to travel over land or sea, owned by a god named Lugh in Irish mythology.
I thought I would check this was correct before I posted it and discovered that Lugh also owns a self-sailing boat named Scuabtuinne ("wave sweeper") so perhaps that would have been a better name although it would have caused other people even more spelling and pronunciation problems than Aenbharr.
I once had to make a Mayday call from my then Drascombe Coaster called Storm, and when I hear some of the sillier boat names I wonder how people would feel spelling them out to the Coastguard.
Whilst cruising in the waters around Skye a few years back there was another vessel we never saw but heard calling Stornoway Coastguard on a couple of occasions. Her name was "Shy Talk"! If the duty operator responded in a hurry we wondered whether there had been a deliberate challenge to her sensibility.
Rory C
Thanks Matthew for another interesting topic and as usual here is a late entry from me. Ristie is the name of a croft on the remote Scottish island of foula. I first learnt of it in a geography book which had a feature on the island and its inhabitants. Years later I went there on an expedition with the Brathay Exporation Group ringing seabirds and discovered that the book I remembered was written by one of their volunteer leaders. We stayed in Ristie and have subsequently stayed there several times. It sheltered me from the storms and its rather basic accommodation is adequate. On that basis I thought it an excellent boat name and as far as I know is the only one such named. It would be great one day to sail into the bay and see both Risties together.
Tim,
Interesting to see that Foula is still on an adapted Julian calendar when the rest of us changed to Gregorian in 1752. Their Christmas day is on 6 January!
I see that it's necessary to haul out on to the beach if you want to take a boat there.
When I was in the merchant navy I was mate for a few months on a bulker called Nosira Madeleine. Try spelling that out to a Korean coastguard on a choppy wet night in January....
She belonged to a man called Ted Arison, who named all his cargo ships after his name backwards plus his wife and daughters. He went on to start Carnival Cruises, now the world's largest cruise group, owning P&O, Cunard etc. No silly names in any of those fleets..
Well, it amused me!
Just came across 'MOO of COWES'
Very simple reason for ours really. John's Mum was French so I try and think of French names for our boats. 'Hirondelle' is French for Swallow, although those of you who remember the 70s might recall a rather unpleasant white wine of the same name.
As someone else wrote, I had never named our boats but not having a name became an issue with our BRe in marinas, etc. I struggled to think of something, but when watching a documentary about George Mallory's expedition to Everest in 1924 (mountains being another passion of mine) I thought "Mallory" was perfect. A fantastic mountaineer and his spirit seemed to sum-up a BRe very well.
Since 2017 a lot of new boats have been christened and perhaps some have been re-named, so maybe its time to refresh this thread. And it would be interesting to see some photos showing your boat in use.
Here are a couple of Gladys to kick off with.
Matthew
BR20 Gladys
Here's a couple of pictures of Sea Pig on her summer holidays, sailing around Mull in August last year.
The first one as taken between Tobermory and Ulva, the second while we were hauled out on Erraid.
The kids choose the name Sea Pig, at the time their favourite TV show was an episode of the cartoon Octonauts that featured a little sea pig character.
Real sea pigs are far less charming than the Octonaut version but I quite like the name. I like to think it brings to mind the famous nautical pigs of the Bahamas. Friendly, straightforward and inexplicably attractive to ladies in bikinis.
Seeing the reference to the Sea Pigs of the Bahamas, might I share a couple of photographs from 2012. The second one of boarding pig resulted from the Mate being less than speedy in throwing an apple core to said pig. Fortunately the trotters did no damage to the dinghy.
Our BC23, due for delivery April 2020 (we travel in hope) will be named Caduceus IV on the basis that our previous 3 boats were all called Caduceus. For those not classically inclined a caduceus is a serpent entwined messengers staff, often used as symbol of the medical profession. Caduceus I was an early (1977) Cornish Crabber, built from a kit by us in Germany and sailed back to the U.K. via canals to Holland and thence to West Mersea. At the time my wife was a civilian doctor with the Army and I was serving in the British Army in the Royal Signals whose cap badge is a figure of Mercury carrying a caduceus in this left hand. The name has served us well and often has resulted in our getting to know other sailors who enquire about the origin of the name.
(1) All my recent boats have been "Sea(something)" and I was thinking of Sea Swallow but there was already one called Gwennol-y-môr, which I guess means much the same, so I remembered that "Sea Swallow" is another name for the Tern ...hence "Seatern" (photo below)
(2) tip: when naming a boat think about transmitting it by radio! As a NCI (National Coastwatch) watchkeeper I hear some embarrassing names being spelt out to the Coastguard. Also, imagine having to send "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday; this is Maid of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll I spell lima lima alpha november foxtrot..." You'd probably have sunk before finishing your message!
My boat named "Two Sisters" perhaps sounds more trad than "Two Daughters", which my BRe might be better named?
As I think I may have mentioned before, they're my excuse for not owning the hybrid Romilly that I always fancied!
On another tack (even more trad, given our Cornish heritage) two sisters might perhaps become "Diw Hwoers" or two daughters "Diw Vyrgh"......I think?
As PT posted below, perhaps not ideal boat names in an emergency, when using the VHF!
Out of curiosity, can any Welsh speakers on here confirm these translations?
Hi Simon,
I'm not a Welsh speaker but did go through two years of trying unsuccessfully to learn it when I was at school in Bangor, in (what was then) Caernarfonshire. Two daughters is dwy (ddwy?) ferch - fairly sure of that - and sisters (according to google translate) dwy chwaer . Both would sound closer to the Cornish when spoken than they look when written down.
You'd need a proper welsh speaker to confirm those properly since Welsh is a language where a word changes depending on the word that follows it (just one of the many reasons I never learnt it)! Also spoken Welsh is different from written Welsh.
Incidentally I was born in Cornwall but I didn't learn Cornish either!
peter
After a little debate within the household we feel Dau Ferched and Dau Chwiorydd might be a better tanslation but we are be no means experts!
Regards
Gareth Rowlands
Papagena, I'm an Opera fan, fortunately very easy to SOS as so few different letters - well that was lucky!
When we bought our BRe, we planned to name it Mas que nada. More than nothing (Brazil) a.k.a. proud to be a small boat sailor. But then my mother died and the boat was named Anna after her. Alpha November November alpha. One of my earlier boats – a dinghy of the Dutch Tern class we used to race - was called Brain of Pooh, which is a quote of The Bear Himself. As we lost her on the road to a Fiat Panda, the replacement dinghy was already named Stop Making Sense. We all can relate to that, I guess. Nothing rational about owning a boat. Thank you Talking Heads. The photo shows y.t. at the sheets in another Tern.
Peter
Bre #7 Anna