The true boat renaming ritual

[Alaris]

I’ve seen all kinds of purported boat renaming rituals on here.

My new boat is documented and has a name, but has been repainted so no name currently adorns her topsides and all remnants of the old name are otherwise gone. I still believe a proper ceremony is in order. Whatcha got?

 

[Marty Gingras]

I've seen several boats renamed but only one ceremony. That ceremony was brief and included a special christening bottle. I see now that West Marine sells them.

 

[lakeneuch]

There are renaming ceremonies for probably every traditional boating community. They all have common elements in the ceremony, so there must be sone truth to it, can't be that the whole world is wrong. The common element is that there's always alcohol involved. So just make up your own.

This summer I helped a french guy rechristen his boat. His version (and I think it's quite common in France) was getting the guarding angel of the boat (that follows the boat in it's wake) drunk by pouring alcoohol in the wake of the boat. Then an other boat with a non drunk guarding angel has to cross the boats wake 3 times to cut the guard off. Then you hastily rechristen the boat with liberal gifts of alcohol etc to your favourite god. Then everyone gets proper drunk. It was fun. Last I heard the boat is still floating.

 

[Jim in Halifax]

That ceremony was brief and included a special christening bottle.

Whoa, Marty! Renaming a boat is serious business and should be neither brief nor limited to a single bottle...

We were involved in helping friends rename their boat. At about 11:00AM we were all amazed that several bottles of wine and champagne had already been consumed pretty early in the day. The owner's son wisely asked: "How can you say you've been drinking all day if you don't start in the morning?"

 

[Marty Gingras]

Whoa, Marty! Renaming a boat is serious business and should be neither brief nor limited to a single bottle...

Culture, we lack it!

Fair number of boats here are named "No Name".

 

[Cruisin Loser]

We had a ceremony with family aboard our SW-42 Sparky, which we named for a beloved black lab that had passed over the winter. At the end the family was in tears and the boat was the new member of the family. I got some blowback from the kids when I told them we were getting a little bit bigger boat. That went away when we donated Sparky to a good cause. Everyone's happy now.

 

[Alaris]

Whoa, Marty! Renaming a boat is serious business and should be neither brief nor limited to a single bottle...

We were involved in helping friends rename their boat. At about 11:00AM we were all amazed that several bottles of wine and champagne had already been consumed pretty early in the day. The owner's son wisely asked: "How can you say you've been drinking all day if you don't start in the morning?"

This is intense but exactly along the lines of what I was looking for. I may truncate it a bit.

 

[Blue Crab]

There's a much shorter thing by author John someone. I have used it in the past, being unable to find a virgin of legal age to drink and be willing to pee in semi-public.

 

[wully]

1. Take off old name
2. Paint/stick on new name
3. Crack open a bottle, go sailing
4. Make up your own traditions
5. Ignore internet advice.

 

[ChrisJD]

Renaming a boat is no joke. We went through the whole ceremony with multiple bottles of champagne (the good stuff) but still had five years of bizarre, unforeseen mechanical failures and truly awful weather after we bought our boat, culminating in a 10-day trip to Maine last year that somehow saw us catch the remnants of three different tropical systems. We realized, while we were putting her away upriver before a three-day hotel stay to ride out the last of the storms, that there was still a stray envelope in one of the lockers containing a work order from the prior owner under the prior name. Problem solved! After we ceremonially burned said work order and confirmed no more references to the old name on the boat, this year we had our first ever multi-week cruise where nothing broke, there were no severe storms, and we made it to every harbor on the day we originally planned to get there.

Neptune is detail-oriented, is the point.

 

[accnick]

When I first looked at the boat I have now, it had a name that happened to be the name of our previous boat. The boat sold to somebody else before I could buy it, and he re-named it. Then I bought it from him a few months later, and went back to the previous name (doing that as part of the documentation process, of course).

I'm confused as to which, if any, re-naming ceremony I should go through to avoid pissing of the gods of boats and names.

 

[billsreef]

The important god to appease is Neptune. Offerings of good Rum are called for.

 

[Gouvernail]

As any renaming ceremony is based upon the silliness that it somehow matters, a proper renaming ceremony is whatever makes you feel good.
Have a little party. Amuse yourself with some sort of ceremony.
My choice would be spending a week on the boat with Kristin

 

[Cruisin Loser]

As any renaming ceremony is based upon the silliness that it somehow matters, a proper renaming ceremony is whatever makes you feel good.
Have a little party. Amuse yourself with some sort of ceremony.
My choice would be spending a week on the boat with Kristin

View attachment 556922

This might be more your speed these days, Gouv!

 

[accnick]

This might be more your speed these days, Gouv!
View attachment 556923

Oh, that hurts!

Reality check...

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Vigor’s de/renaming:

48° Vigor's Interdenominational Boat Denaming Ceremony

 

[jerseyguy]

As any renaming ceremony is based upon the silliness that it somehow matters, a proper renaming ceremony is whatever makes you feel good.
Have a little party. Amuse yourself with some sort of ceremony.
My choice would be spending a week on the boat with Kristin

View attachment 556922

I wouldn’t last a week.

 

[Ajax]

It's fine to look up the ceremony but I wouldn't select a name yet.

Dislodge the boat from Mount Ararat, fix the boat over the winter, go sailing in the spring, and see if the boat speaks to you.

 

[Mid]

Quite simple , if ya ain't in the least bit superstitious then ya ain't a sailor .

 

[LakeBoy]

If you have some friends with you on Mt. Ararat (@Ajax ) when the boat is leaving the yard, have a de-naming ceremony to leave the name there, far, far from the sea.

When it is ready for launching, have the naming part of the ceremony.

If @lakeneuch 's story has a kernel of truth in cutting the history I think a few miles at interstate speed should do the trick.

BTW, congratulations on the new boat.