Boating and the Stock Market, Boating and Japanese Theism, Boating and Nomenclature

With the torrential rains we have endured here in Vero the past week Meredith's dinghy resembles AIG: it needs a bailout.

The autopilot arrived Friday afternoon and was installed and calibrated on Saturday. Installation was straighforward but rechecking the multiple power connections (4 in all) and circuit logic needed another 3hours, all of it in the lazarette/bilge on a day that reached the high 80's.

Boat repair and Seppuku have vague but disturbing similarities. Both are undertaken willingly, almost as a rite of manhood. Both involve the self infliction of cuts to the torso. Once in the lazarette/bilge you cannot move without impaling yourself multiple times. Cleanup after boat work takes more time than the work itself. All that blood...

All that is left for the autopilot debacle is for us to calibrate the compass. This is a simple 14 step process of setting up the calibration routine, turning around twice at a rate of exactly 6 degrees per second while Connie sacrifices a goat in a fire doped with eye of newt. Soon. Soon.

We have spent some time with friends Ross and Valerie from Toronto Island Marina on their Hughes 40, Mystic 1. This has caused some rumination on the whole issue of boat names.

Who names their boat Mystic 1? How does someone know, when buying and naming their first boat Mystic that there will be another boat and that they will want to name it Mystic as well thereby necessitating the addition of the numeral 1 to the nomenclature?

I mean it is sort of like naming your boat Never Again II.

Our friends Randy and Donna, also from Toronto, must name the Bertram 30 sportfisher they have just purchased down here in Stuart Florida.

With the addition by this pair of the Latte machine to the boat's essential equipment list we suggested the name Grande or Vente or some other Starbucks fantasy.

Donna however likes cute names: their last boat, a Limestone 26, was named Buttercup.

Randy found this unsettling and for the new boat he is promoting Killer B, which if you know Randy is sort of like the guy who names his pet Chihuahua "Brutus"; a sort of "Walter Mitty" response.

Donna arrived on Wednesday and sensitive to Randy's, well, sensitivities, she took a whole day before offering her suggestion: Baby KillerB. I coughed hard when she told us. More of a choke really.

In Donna's mind this name, I am sure, conjured up images of a cute little baby bumblebee swathed in diapers.

What filled my mind was a bit different: an overmuscled Norse Wasp warrior with a mace crushing little newborns in a berserker rage.

It is all in the emphasis you see: BABY killerb or BABYKILLER B.

I am sure Randy will approve of Donna's choice.