“Don’t name the boat right away. Sail the boat a while — it will name itself.”
Diane was raised in Missouri and is very much true to the state slogan. After hearing “are you sure?” for the hundredth time, Show Me seemed appropriate. Diane wasn’t thrilled about the second possible reading of the phrase, but consented to the name.
“We are Trekkies, and in a weak moment I used my wife’s computer name.” His Flying Dutchman got a blunter title — Widow Maker — awarded after he sank it.
An old Scottish word the four of them (D.A.M.P.) thought most appropriate for a floating party barge: “to hold a merry meeting, with noise and riot, but without doing injury to anyone. It includes the idea of a wasteful use of food and of intemperate use of strong drink.”
John Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language
When they started sailing in 2006 and chartered a forty-footer, people would ask who else was going. The answer was always “just us”. They bought the San Juan in 2007 when most racing boats carried three, and wanted to learn to sail her two-handed. The name stuck — though Aggie has been known to call her “Baby”.
The unit of beauty required to launch exactly one ship — Helen of Troy’s face having launched a thousand.
More of these are being brought across from the old site, and more keep arriving.
If your boat’s name has a story behind it, send it to fla.lmsa@gmail.com and it will go up here. The stranger the better.
The question was asked while towing boats home after the breeze died at a December regatta — which is, on balance, the most LMSA origin story a page could have.