Boat names

[ifoxwell]

As we are currently looking for our first twelve I find my self looking at the boat database quite a bit and....
Dont you guys know that its bad luck to rename a boat !
It seems like half your fleet has been known as something else in the past ??)
Ian

[thedodger]

Hi ian. You are correct that you should never rename a boat while afloat, but perfectly OK to rename a boat on shore.

[Jane Wade]

I'm with you Ian - once a boat has a name, keep it.  But then again you pay your money and you take your choice! 

[sam293]

again with ian, boats should keep the name they are given!

[martin 1262]

...depends on the name of the boat you inherit....a subsequent owner could hate some of the names..... and as Jane says you pay your £10 and you take your choice.
 
Martin
N3458 (orginially Up Yours and Now White Heat)
N2306 (previously Snafu (??) and now sticky fingers (which is more rock and roll!!;))

[alanp]

If the original name is a naff pun or smutty double entendre, would it not be a great favour to your newly-acquired boat to re-christen her with something a little more dignified?  Or am I just old and misty-eyed?

[Jane Wade]

I really would not have wanted to sail a boat called 'Up Yours' - how unpleasant!

[ifoxwell]

The last Grdauate we had was called Blue Tack
The first thing we did was restore it, as it was getting tatty and had developed a reputation in the fleet as being a bit of a dog. Part of this process was to give it back its origional name 'Skybird' 
It was a pretty naff name but we subsequently won a lot of races in that boat before selling it... and I like to think that changing the name back played its part. After all there is no arguing that luck is a factor in any race so we thought, why tempt fate, and mess with things that we dont pretend to understand 
Ian

[Alistair Edwards]

Prior to seeing the light and joining the N12 class I sailed an Enterprise called Turbo Charged Veggie Burger.
Despite many changes of ownership in it's 30 year life the name has never been changed. Needless to say race officers always abbreviate the name to TCVB.

[chopper]

the original name of my pipe dream really would have been socialy unexeptable Tobbaco road now Kaon but have no idea what Kaon means so if anyone knows please let me know before I change it

[Tim Gatti]

[face=Helv]Kaon? - Paul - I bet you'll wish you never asked... [/face][face=Helv]:[/face] 
In particle physics, a kaon, also called a K-meson is any one of a group of four mesons distinguished by the fact that they carry a quantum number called strangeness. In the quark model they are understood to contain a single strange quark (or antiquark).
The four kaons are :
1. The negatively charged K- (containing a strange quark and an up antiquark) has mass 493.667±0.013 MeV and mean lifetime 1.2384±0.0024×10-8 s.
2. Its antiparticle, the positively charged K+ (containing an up quark and a strange antiquark) must (by CPT invariance) have mass and lifetime equal to that of K-. The mass difference is 0.032±0.090 MeV, consistent with zero. The difference in lifetime is 0.11±0.09×10-8.
3. The K0 (containing a down quark and a strange antiquark) has mass 497.648±0.022 MeV. It has mean squared charge radius of -0.076±0.01 fm2.
4. Its antiparticle K-0 (containing a strange quark and a down antiquark) has the same mass.
It is clear from the quark model assignments that the kaons form two doublets of isospin; that is, they belong to the fundamental representation of SU(2) called the 2. One doublet of strangeness +1 contains the K+ and the K0. The antiparticles form the other doublet.
[face=Helv]Many thanks to Wikepedia for clearing that up!
I quite like the phrase 'Doublet of Strangeness' as a boat name
[/face]

[GarryR]

Best name I ever saw was
 
"A l'eau, c'est l'heure"
 
Brilliant!!!!

[chopper]

thanks Tim thats added to my day of confusion Im sure Ill get even more when I take my Iphone back to the O2 store in a minute

[MattW]

I always thought that the tradition was that you can change a boat/ship's name but don't expect that doing this will change the craft's character - i.e. just renaming an unlucky ship won't improve your fortunes. Didn't think there was anything intrinsically unlucky about renaming. I renamed my first N12 'Beau Pipe' from 'Wet Dream'. The boat was of course a Pipedream, and I wanted to continue the link between name and design, but as a teenager at the time the thought of a boat named after a nocturnal emission was just that little bit too potentially embarassing. 'Pipe' was to be pronounced 'Peep' as in 'Bo Peep' but translating roughly as 'beautiful pipe' (which I rather liked, although no doubt the next French speaker to drop by will confirm that to be correct it should have been 'Belle Pipe', which of course renders the pun inactive). I gather the boat is now called 'Surprise' which is a far better name for a boat.
My old oppo Simon Hipkin built a new Final Chapter and renamed it twice while he still owned it - it was registered as Saline Drip (don't ask me why) before changing very quickly to 'Vlad the Impaler', much more rakish IMO, and after a couple of years to 'Victim of Geography' in deference to his love of Billy Bragg and the subject of his undergrad degree. It's now 'Purple Haze' which is entirely appropriate as the boat was originally finished in a lovely shade of Vauxhall Corsa purple (and presumably still is).

[Jim Bretherick (Guest)]

My old Tigress - now Tim G's used to be called "Midnight Blues" (N3130) Martina and I sailed her on the Ammersee and some kids in a pedalo said she looked like a nutshell, so I thought the name "Nuttyshell" would do. We used to call her "Nutty", primarily because we were.  Now she's back to being called "Midnight Blues" again...I'd also have called her "Dirty Thirty" since she wasn't 100% double thirty.
I never changed the name of "Passion Pudding", (N3470) primarily because the name fits the boat.
I gave Emma an Optimist called "Wave Function", which got to soggy and being a dog, went via a hand saw to the boat's graveyard last year.
My latest's a quantum leap in performance, but still feeling beholden to the 12 class (where it all started again for me), I call my 59er "Slippery when Wet". I believe this is/was a pipedream... 
Happy sailing!
Jim Bretherick, Ammersee, Munich, Germany