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Renaming a boat....

This is always a sensitive subject for boat owners, and something which, even though we are not particularly superstitious, we talked a lot about. The problem was that the boat's old name was made up from the names of the previous owners- Paul, Vi, Andrew and Neil= Pavianne
This was a bit weird for us, but we still didnt want to offend the Gods of.... well, any of them. However, things were finally cleared up when Vi told us she totally understood if we wanted to change the name. Getting her blessing- (completely out of the blue, we never mentioned it to her) was like a sign from above, so we searched high and low for options and renaming ceremonies.
We had always had a joke that we wuld call one of our boats "Miss Moneypenny". It comes from our jobs, our love of James Bond films and a drunken fancy dress party.... but we wont go there!!
The first thing we did was remove everything on board which had some reference to 'Pavianne' or her old owners. The only thing we kept was a silver ring found in the bilge, which fit Jay's finger exactly (once he'd bent it back into shape!) He's worn that ring ever since. Anyway, we painstakingly cleansed the boat (you can see the pictures of how much stuff there was in her- it took a long time!!) and once this was done we had a small ceremony. You have to remove all traces of the old boat as this informs Neptune or Poseidon

She was resting on railway sleepers- and when the crane lifted her up, she fell over to port slightly and split the railway sleeper on that side clean in two! We were very scared then. We had done all this work, put in all this effort, money and love and there was a high chance she might go in the water and sink. It was not a pleasant morning.
We had done the name using stick on letters- which looked lovely and were an awful lot easier than painting it on. However, we had used clear varnish to help them stick down- and it dried yellow. But at least it made our hull look whiter!
She's smiling!!!
Here she is, all safe in her berth. Jay bought her in like a pro. She was in the slings for a while so we could tighten the stuffing gland and check stopcocks and things. Everything seemed fine- and she floated! We had to drive her out of the slings, reverse in a tight spot and then motor round to our berth. It was only then that we realised this girl does not like going backwards- at least not with any form of control and never ever the way you really hope she'll go! But we made it, and there she is- safe sound and floating. All our hard work paid off. That was summer 2004.
We had a small celebration with friends and famly a couple of weeks later- used posh stuff this time!
After this refit, we lived on her for a couple of months, and then set sail to take her down to the South Coast of England. This sounds lovely, except for the fact that we had to do it all at weekends as we worked during the week, so everytime we went anywhere we had to find somewhere to stop where we could safely leave the boat and get a train back to where we'd left our cars. This was not easy, especially not Sunday evenings in Wales. Read our log in "Sailing Her" for the full story.

that the old boat will no longer be sailing on their seas. Apparently, every vessel is recorded in the 'Ledger of the Deep' and the Gods keep track of them all. There is a story of a guy who changed his boat name and later found a key chain still on board with her old name attached. He decided not to redo the ceremony, and since then he was struck by lightening, destroyed his engine and was eventually sunk! We were meticulous in our preparations!!! Another important point is to ensure that no traces of the new name are brought on board before the naming ceremony.

There are countless de-naming and naming rites and words which you need to speak. Jay made up his own, using a lot of very legal sounding words, thanking both Neptune and Poseidon (along with their wives, children and second cousins) for the safety of the vessel so far on her travels and to show our appreciation we offer this small token... (here you are supposed to liberally pour champagne everywhere, but neither of us can stand the stuff, so the gods got whisky and Fanta. Aren't we classy! ) Once that's done, we went straight into our hope that the Gods would look favourably on the new name of the vessel in their care and remember our humble tokens given to them etc etc (here we poured more Fanta, not so much of the whiskey). I think we also gave offerings for good winds and safe passages, or something like that, but eventually it became toasts which we drank on behalf of the gods. :) A good night had by all!

Once that was finished, we got on with putting the new name on the boat, and then she was ready to go into the water!