{"id":20385,"date":"2025-11-18T10:02:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T10:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/?p=20385"},"modified":"2025-11-18T10:02:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T10:02:27","slug":"the-perils-of-an-unnamed-boat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/?p=20385","title":{"rendered":"The Perils of an Unnamed Boat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    The Perils of an Unnamed Boat<br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/BR><br \/>\n    <!-- no image --><br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/BR><\/p>\n<div>\n<section class=\"hydra-container\">\n<div class=\"hydra-canvas\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/boatingmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BTG1025-OMD-Names-1024x768.jpg?resize=800%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" class=\"hydra-image disable-lazyload\" alt=\"Neptune curses unnamed boats\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BTG1025-OMD-Names-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BTG1025-OMD-Names-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BTG1025-OMD-Names-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BTG1025-OMD-Names-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BTG1025-OMD-Names.jpg 2000w\">                <\/div><figcaption class=\"caption margin_top_xs full border_1 hydra-figcaption\">\n                <span class=\"hydra-image-caption\">Unnamed boats are flirting with potential calamity cast upon them by Neptune.<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"article_image_credit italic margin_right_xs\">Tim Bower<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/section>\n<p><iframe id=\"wxuzj5efbz\" src=\"https:\/\/boatingmag.dragonforms.com\/wxuzj5efbz\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"width:100%;height:165px;border:none;overflow:hidden;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For more than three years I\u2019ve been tempting fate on the water. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m making bad choices. I\u2019m wearing my life jacket. I\u2019m a sober captain. I leave a float plan. But I\u2019m 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\u2014Neptune lurks at every launch ramp, checking to see if you\u2019ve cleaned the milfoil off your trailer.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014or Njord in this case\u2014and offering a tribute of Hamm\u2019s beer, \u201cFrom the Land of Sky Blue Waters \u2026\u201d. Chuck, of course, took this seriously and now he\u2019s been bugging me about naming my vintage Dunphy, a 14-foot mahogany plywood runabout.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201ccollege fund.\u201d And, yes, preschool children do gamble in Northwoods\u2019 taverns so please mind your own business.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway\u2026Chuck slides into the booth and shares his thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know the lake is frozen but you\u2019ve got to come up with a name for the Dunphy before next season,\u201d Chuck said, \u201cespecially if you\u2019re 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!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I have been trying to come up with a name. There\u2019s some tradition that you name a boat after a wife\u2014but which one?\u2014or a daughter, but I have five of those. Some owners like puns such as <em>Seas the Day<\/em> but does that work on a vintage boat? There are names that allude to a profession, so I could go with <em>Writer\u2019s Block<\/em> but that\u2019s so corny. I asked my wife for an idea and she suggested <em>Bob<\/em>, which was no help at all. She is only interested in staging the boat with mid-century accessories.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read Next:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/how-to\/installing-an-illuminated-boat-name\/\">Installing an Illuminated Boat Name<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have got two ideas I think are pretty good. The first is <em>Dasher<\/em> because for its vintage, this Dunphy has a rather rakish profile, a descending sheer and low freeboard aft. It\u2019s a dashing boat! The second is <em>Analog<\/em>, because there is nothing digital about this boat. It doesn\u2019t 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 <em>Analogue<\/em> but that\u2019s a bit pretentious. Save that for the Gar Wood find in a barn.<\/p>\n<p>So, will it be <em>Dasher<\/em> or <em>Analog<\/em>? I asked the grandchildren, and the\u00a0 little 4-year-old looked up from his pull tabs and said, \u201cGrandpa, just name it <em>Bob<\/em>.\u201d Neptune weeps.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/how-to\/the-perils-of-an-unnamed-boat\/\">The Perils of an Unnamed Boat<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/\">Boating Mag<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> \t<BR><br \/>\n <BR><\/BR><br \/>\n    Charles Plueddeman<br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/BR><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/boatingmag.com\/how-to\/the-perils-of-an-unnamed-boat\/\">Go to boatingmag<\/a><br \/>\n \t<BR><br \/>\n <BR><\/BR><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Perils of an Unnamed Boat Unnamed boats are flirting with potential calamity cast upon them by Neptune. Tim Bower For more than three years I\u2019ve been tempting fate on the water. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m making bad choices. I\u2019m wearing my life jacket. I\u2019m a sober captain. I leave a float plan. But I\u2019m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,175,6468,994],"tags":[127],"class_list":["post-20385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boatingmag","category-how-to","category-november-december-2025","category-off-my-dock","tag-boatingmag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krogragg.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}