A new role brings a fresh identity
Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015
I renamed my boat. For several years, I’ve made my home aboard a 1967 Irwin 27 . . . just another narrow-beamed mass-produced vintage sloop with beautiful lines keeping afloat a decaying collection of antiquated systems. For my first foray into the liveaboard subculture, I couldn’t have a more fitting vessel. If you can revive an old boat, I think you have a fighting chance of successfully living on the water.
Ariel needed a lot of attention. I enjoyed her out in the bay on those weekends when I had her essentials working, but for long-term cruising she needed a serious refit. Once you start pulling systems apart, “I might as well fix that while I’m at it” becomes your new mantra, and what you thought may take a couple of months ends up taking a couple of years. A couple hundred bucks spent here and there soon becomes a couple thousand spent everywhere.
Even though I updated, altered, or modified everything aboard Ariel, I never had a strong desire to rename her. Considering all of the controversy that surrounds this issue, I was reluctant to even entertain the thought. But things do change, sometimes even names.
To most anyone who owns a boat, her name and subsequent alterations can be a very slippery topic. According to nautical folklore, it’s bad luck to rename a boat. Traditionally, a boat’s name was expected to last the lifetime of the vessel. If the captain is willing the throw caution to the wind and rename a vessel, doing so requires an elaborate ceremony. Although I don’t hold to superstitions, I don’t heedlessly flaunt them. As this boat is my home and livelihood, the last thing I need is to arouse bad mojo by offending her.
Can a boat even be offended? There’s a sense among seafarers that boats are to be treated as living entities with personalities. Rationally speaking, I understand that a boat is an inanimate object with some moving parts, assembled and manipulated to perform a certain function. Furthermore, I know how quick we are to anthropomorphize everything we encounter.
I know my boat is not a person. She’s not even alive. I can prove it. But I don’t care. If my life can be experienced more acutely or enjoyed with more satisfaction because I choose to engage in the nonsensical, why not? Why not think of and refer to my boat as a living entity? Especially if doing so makes me more comfortable with her operation, makes me feel more intimate and connected with her sounds and movements, inspires me to sail more, or helps me gauge when to push her or ease off. Sure I can think only of cause and effect and reduce everything to quantifiable facts. But life is short and I’m not willing to limit my experiences simply to what can be proved, calculated, or measured. Life is more enjoyable when I remain open to coincidences, risks, karma, faith, magic, dreams, stargazing, and gut feelings.
If you adopt a dog, it’s unlikely you’ll rename her, because she’s accustomed to her name. It’s part of her identity. So too, I believe, it is with boats. But after two hard years spent stripping, gutting, and cutting into my boat; of measuring, marking, and calculating; of sanding, building, and sealing; of packing, unpacking, and repacking her holds; of screaming in frustration and laughing at mishap, even crying at completion; of blood and sweat dripped into countless cups of mixed resin; of forming, molding, fitting, and refitting; of waiting for weather windows; of watching wood, feeling its grain, finding its shape; of long nights with work lights and beer-can rejuvenations; of busted knuckles and split knees, and calm nights and ocean breezes; of tangles of wire, jumbles of junk and treasure, and bits of copper, steel, and aluminium; of spilled solvents, leaking oil, scrubbed stains, epoxy gobs, and fresh paint; of drifting thoughts and design attempts; of hours counted and hours lost; of plastic wrap and masking tape; of fights with loved ones, short sharp breaths, counts to 10, and long slow afternoons of nonsense; of money earned, spent, and spent again; of nuts and bolts, crimps and adapters, bushings and filters, reducers, nipples, gaskets, terminals, couplers, and stripped threads; after crawling over, scraping, prepping, smelling, and re-coating every surface of my boat inside and out . . . she was no longer the same boat.
If ever there was an appropriate time to rename a boat, this was it. She had manifested into a character all her own, as if she had shed an old skin and reveled in a fresh new one. Over the course of the entire process, we had grown together and learned from each other. I pushed her through a metamorphosis and she pulled me along with her. We were forever changed, individually and collectively.
Ariel was a fine vessel, but she was someone else’s boat, someone else’s relationship, not mine. This was the start of something new and needed to be recognized as such. If you do rename an adopted dog, it’s not just because she’s now your dog but because her former name resurrects a past that no longer applies. And so Ariel is no more. In her place, with an avocado-green paint job to match, is Guacamole.
Zachary Krochina is a born-and-raised Alaskan who tends to get his fingers messy in as many endeavors and misadventures as possible. He currently resides in the balmy Florida Keys and, with his Aussie partner, is attempting to outfit a boat capable of delivering them both to the land Down Under.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
