Skip to main content

We have a boat name!

Image
By

After many, many walks around the block in the evenings, we have decided on a name!

 Sailing Vessel Mira (SV Mira for short)

What makes naming a boat so hard is that you can choose from a lot of different types of names.  You can be "funny/punny" and name a boat something like Knot Working, or Never Again 2.  You can name a boat after a concept or a feeling, like Tranquility, Respite or Traveler.  And you can, of course, name your boat using a proper name; traditionally a girl's name, but something simple like Jenny, or as in friends of ours, Greek Goddess.

Given that this boat will be our home, we quickly ruled out funny/punny names.  That just doesn't seem right.

BUT, we got stuck for a while on concept/feeling names and just a traditional girl's name.  We both brainstormed and came up with lists.  We then bounced them off one-another and looked into their meanings.  Names that meant things like "trusting" or "sinky" were quickly eliminated.

So what made us decide on Mira?

A couple of things:
  1. It's short and easy to spell over the VHF (Mike, India, Romeo, Alpha)
  2. We think it is a pretty sounding name
  3. It has very pleasant and appropriate meanings for many, many cultures
Mira Name Meanings
  • Gaelic: merry; filled with mirth
  • Latin: wonder; wonderful; admirable; peace; female ruler; ocean
  • Slavic: peace
  • Albanian: goodness or kindness
  • Spanish: behold; literal translation of "to look"
  • Sanskrit: ocean; sea; boundary; limit
  • Kurdish: duchess; princess
  • Latin: extraordinary; to be admired; beautiful
  • Greek: fate; destiny

Lastly, Mira is also the name of a variable red star in the Cetus (Whale) constellation, which allows us to carry on the theme of our current boat, Betelgeuse, which is the name of the variable red star in the Orion constellation.

To celebrate our naming, we had these bottle openers made up that we used to hand out to friends and family at a get together we had:


Turns out the minimum order quantity is 500, so we have a LOT left.  We plan to use these as give-aways as we meet people during our travels and to give them to customs officials as we check into new countries that we are visiting (a lot of cruisers will give out hats with their boat's name on them, but we thought this may be more useful).

Thoughts on the name?  Thoughts on the bottle opener?  Let us know in the comment area below!
Labels:
Location: Cary, NC, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Victron Isolation Transformer - How to lower the output voltage

By
Re-configuring a Victron Energy isolation transformer This is a companion article to a YouTube video  covering the same topic. What are they and why do I need one? Victron Energy isolation transformers are often used on boats that connect to shore power in order to provide a means of providing isolation between the shore power and the AC power that exists on the boat.  The transformer sits in between those two worlds and isolates that two power supplies through magnetic flux and an air-gap. The reason this is needed on a marine vessel is because without it, small leakage currents can flow between the earth ground for shore power and the "earth ground" connection on the boat, which is usually connected to water through a propeller shaft, out-drive, sail-drive or sacrificial zincs. That creates a loop and that small leakage current greatly accelerates any galvanic corrosion that naturally happens. Current flows through the water because of the salt content, or even in fresh-wat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Raising the dinghy, easier!

By
The Davit System The Vision 444 comes with a Carbon Fiber Davit system that is used to hoist a dinghy.  As time has gone on, some of the exact specifics of the davit system have evolved and changed slightly, but for our boat (Hull #11) and the ones near to it, this is how it operates.  Two Main Steps First, after attaching the dinghy to a forward and aft attachment line, the davit arms are raised; pivoting on axles which mount the davit to the transom of the boat.  This step is accomplished by attaching a line which runs through several blocks to the starboard, aft power winch.  Pressing "2" (low speed) on the winch power buttons and raising the davit into its full upright position, where it can be lashed to the boat with Dyneema loops. Second, is to raise the dinghy to be close under the horizontal beams of the davit arms.  The dinghy attachment lines, that are attached to the dinghy's bridle, run up through a fixed block at the end of the davit arms and then t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Vision 444 - How to (hopefully never have to) use a Storm Sail

By
 How to use the Storm Sail on a Vision 444 My fellow Visionary Pierre on Umbono reached out recently wanting to review the steps for deploying the Storm Sail, since he was forecasted to be in less-than ideal sailing conditions in the next day. What better opportunity to write a blog article! This is going out quickly to support Pierre, but I will come back and add pictures and maybe link a video later. Preparation Keep the Storm Sail and everything you need for it somewhere where it is easy to get. We keep ours in the large lazarette under the Cockpit table seating. If you think you might need the Storm Sail, you probably should have the jacklines put out too.  The system we use to deploy the Storm Sail reduces the time we need to be forward, but wearing a life vest with harness and being clipped into the lazy jacks is the way to go here. Our Storm sail is in it's own bag with the following: A port sheet attached to the clew with a bowline A starboard sheet attached to the cle...
Post a Comment
Read more