What's in a name?

There is a superstition that changing a boat's name is bad luck. We are fairly superstitious sailors, but this is the one thing we don't subscribe to.

Our first boat was named 'HI-C' when we bought her, we were not impressed! So, we christened her 'NoNews' shortly after buying her. We brainstormed many different names before ordering the graphics, but NoNews really seemed to fit. She was a Wauquiez Pretorien 35' performance cruiser. We kept the systems fairly simple aboard, which meant no SSB or Satellite phone- basically no way to communicate with the outside world while we were on passage. Well, No News is Good News right?? (If I hear that joke one more time I might scream). After we had owned NoNews for awhile, we found some interesting facts about her (its was 2002 after all, before google searches were so easy!). The original owner, Peter Brown, had commissioned her new in France and sailed her through the Caribbean and across the Pacific, finally selling her in South Africa (cool fact- he and *our* boat are mentioned in Lin Pardey's book 'The Care and Feeding of the Sailing Crew' Cool huh?). He was a lawyer from San Francisco, and had originally named her Emerald City. That is a cool name! If we had known her original name we would have changed it back- not sure what the superstition on that is though.

Our next boat, also a Wauquiez but an Amphritrite, a 42' center cockpit ketch was named Bon Vivant when we bought her. This was the name from the factory in France, apparently they named each boat upon launching. The direct translation is: 'bon vivant - a person devoted to refined sensuous enjoyment (especially good food and drink)- huh, maybe we should have kept it! But we didn't. We bought her while we were at anchor in Tonga after sailing across the Pacific. Its terrible to say, but after seeing so many beautiful atolls and sandy islands with volcanic peaks, one gets jaded and a bit picky about what constitutes beauty. I know, I know. Everyone should be so lucky! Anyways, after seeing many islands we sailed to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Rarotonga has the reputation for being a good (cheap) place to re provision mid-ocean. This is old information and is no longer cheap- in fact its quite expensive. The island, although pretty, doesn't hold a candle to many of the other places we had been in the past months. However, we met many expats in Rarotonga- some from the US but most from New Zealand and Australia. We were told this many times over:::
'You might as well swallow your anchor, this is the LAST PARADISE on Earth'
Well, when we were brainstorming names for the new boat we kept remembering this advise. The fact of the matter is that each person has an idea of what paradise is, and most likely no two are the same. For us, our 'Last Paradise' is sailing, exploring and being together.

Now on to the 'new' boat. WAKA. As some of you might know we are Residents of New Zealand and plan on living there for some portion of John's school years. The Maroi are the indigenous people in New Zealand and the Maori language is leaned in schools. Translation:: Waka (English pronunciation: /ˈwɒkə/, Maori [ˈwɒka]) are Māori watercraft, usually canoes ranging in size from small, unornamented canoes (waka tīwai) used for fishing and river travel, to large decorated war canoes (waka taua) up to 40 metres (130 ft) long. In recent years, large double-hulled canoes of considerable size have been constructed for oceanic voyaging to other parts of the Pacific Ocean.
Seems perfect, right?

In the beginning....

I guess to catch you all up, I'll have to start at the very beginning.


(Yes, this is Jeff circa 1999, shortly after we met!)

Jeff and I met in Harbor Springs at the LTYC Regatta way back in 1999, I was at the tender age of 20! We both have slightly different stories of what exactly happened that weekend, but we both distinctly remember sitting outside Irish's by the pay phone. We were chatting (Jeff's attempt at flirting?) and I was trying to act 'cool'. I remember saying that I was going to sail around the world someday (I think I was reading 'Maiden Voyage' by Tania Aebi for the 3rd or 4th time) Jeff said "me too, I just haven't found the interested party yet" I raised my hand and said 'here I am'....

The next full year was filled with road trips, me helping him with his business in Chicago and various other places, and the quest for 'the boat'. We also did quite a bit of practice cruising around the Florida Keys on Jeff's Dad's Compac 19, now thats close quarters!

Finding the right boat for distance cruising is a bit like finding the perfect mate. Its a long journey filled with a lot of duds, but when you find it you know... (funny I should say that, Jeff and I are on our second perfect boat now! but that's another story for another post).

Jeff and I drove to Nova Scotia to look at a boat. We flew to California. We looked at, picked apart, and denied boats all over the US and Canada on the Internet. And finally in September of 2001 we found a 35' Wauquiez Pretorien for sale in Hollywood, FL. Jeff had spent a fair amount of time on a 33' Wauquiez Gladiator in his youth sailing with family friends, so he knew the construction, seaworthiness and sail performance fairly well. Another positive for the Pretorien, Hal Roth who was one of the world's leading authorities on sailing and adventure writing, owned one as his final yacht! You don't get much better than that.


So now its 2001, we own 'the boat'... whats next?