For more than three years I’ve been tempting fate on the water. It’s not that I’m making bad choices. I’m wearing my life jacket. I’m a sober captain. I leave a float plan. But I’m suffering from severe indecision, specifically about naming my boat. And by not naming my boat, according to tradition and legend, I risk incurring the wrath of Neptune. I convinced myself that Neptune was certainly too busy ruling over the Seven Seas to bother with a small lake in the North Woods. But then I did my research, and in the Roman religion, Neptune is the god of the sea and of fresh water. So there you go—Neptune lurks at every launch ramp, checking to see if you’ve cleaned the milfoil off your trailer.
Faithful readers will recall the time the Lake View Inn gang pestered my good friend Chuck Larson into conducting an elaborate ceremony to rename his new Alumacraft, which involved positioning the boat with the bow facing due north at sunset, reciting a carefully crafted invocation to Neptune—or Njord in this case—and offering a tribute of Hamm’s beer, “From the Land of Sky Blue Waters …”. Chuck, of course, took this seriously and now he’s been bugging me about naming my vintage Dunphy, a 14-foot mahogany plywood runabout.
Just last Friday night Chuck cornered me in a back booth at the Lake View Inn, where I was watching the grandchildren open their pull tabs.
Cultural Interpretation: After our fish fry dinner I buy each grandchild $5 worth of pull tabs. This started as a distraction until one of them won $250, which their father promptly confiscated for the “college fund.” And, yes, preschool children do gamble in Northwoods’ taverns so please mind your own business.
Anyway…Chuck slides into the booth and shares his thoughts.
“I know the lake is frozen but you’ve got to come up with a name for the Dunphy before next season,” Chuck said, “especially if you’re taking these beautiful little children out on the water. How could you ever forgive yourself if Neptune decides to cast calamity down from the heavens? Maybe he sends a surf wake to swamp your little boat!”
I have been trying to come up with a name. There’s some tradition that you name a boat after a wife—but which one?—or a daughter, but I have five of those. Some owners like puns such as Seas the Day but does that work on a vintage boat? There are names that allude to a profession, so I could go with Writer’s Block but that’s so corny. I asked my wife for an idea and she suggested Bob, which was no help at all. She is only interested in staging the boat with mid-century accessories.
Read Next: Installing an Illuminated Boat Name
I have got two ideas I think are pretty good. The first is Dasher because for its vintage, this Dunphy has a rather rakish profile, a descending sheer and low freeboard aft. It’s a dashing boat! The second is Analog, because there is nothing digital about this boat. It doesn’t even have a key. To shut down the Evinrude outboard I push the choke button on the dash. I could get a little fancy and go with Analogue but that’s a bit pretentious. Save that for the Gar Wood find in a barn.
So, will it be Dasher or Analog? I asked the grandchildren, and the little 4-year-old looked up from his pull tabs and said, “Grandpa, just name it Bob.” Neptune weeps.
