Name the Penguin!

[bamamick]

I will be up near Annapolis the middle of this month to pick up the Penguin and I have been thinking of names. Quite honestly I am about tired of having to think up names for boats and wondered if anyone else had any ideas?

She is varnished on the inside with navy topsides and bottom. Varnished spars. I thought of naming her 'Blue Jacket' because I always liked that name, but that may be a little high-horsed for a 12' boat. Other than that I am drawing a blank.

Anyone have a suggestion (other than 'Ópus'. The first person to suggest Ópus'will get a healthy raspberry thrown their way )?

Mickey Lake

[paladin]

Chilly Willy?

[neal debonte]

Flying Circus

Sorry, just watched the Holy Grail for the zillionth time, and we all know Monty Python did some great stuff with penguins.

I will consider myself rasberried

[WX]

Dare I say Happy Feet?

[2MeterTroll]

Mr. Popper

[WX]

Isabelline
Waitaha I like this one.
Emperor

[The Bigfella]

You beat me to Emperor there Gary.

There's Adelie, Fairy (hmm, maybe not unless you change the paint to pink), lots more here...

http://www.penguins.cl/penguins-species.htm

Perhaps "Erect-Crested"?

[The Bigfella]

Erect Crested is growing on me.....

sorta fits the whole sail / mast concept

[isla]

How about Rockhopper?

[John B]

We see little blue penguins every time we go out.

[seanz]

Just logged in.....you beat me to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Penguin

In Maori, Korora.

[seanz]

Or Jen 2.

[seanz]

The Emperor Strikes Beak.


No?


Too long?

[bamamick]

That's cool! (I meant the little blue penguins)

Mickey Lake

[John B]

To us they're just part of the furniture ,but I've noticed people from other countries get a bit surprised to see them.

[The Bigfella]

Yeah - they nest just inside the entrance to Sydney Harbour too. Good to see them though, isn't it. We call them Fairy Penguins though, not Little Blue.

[rbgarr]

Like Forrest Gump, make it easy on yourself: name all your boats Jenny.

Or in this case, the always trite but hopefully accurate Blue Bayou?

[johngsandusky]

Tuxedo

[stevedwyer]

The penguin's mightier than the fjord

[Thorne]

Scots SF / Speculative Fiction writer Iain Banks has a great time with his spaceship names, some of which might work for a sailboat -

Screw Loose
Flexible Demeanour
Just Read The Instructions
Of Course I Still Love You
Limiting Factor
Cargo Cult
Little Rascal
So Much For Subtlety
Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence
Youthful Indiscretion
Gunboat Diplomat
Zealot
Kiss My Ass
Prime Mover

Just Testing
Xenophobe Torturer
Very Little Gravitas Indeed
What Are The Civilian Applications?
Congenital Optimist
Size Isn't Everything
Sweet and Full of Grace

Bad for Business n/a
Arbitrary
Cantankerous
Only Slightly Bent
I Thought He Was With You n
Space Monster
A Series Of Unlikely Explanations
Big Sexy Beast
Never Talk To Strangers
Funny, It Worked Last Time...Boo!
Ultimate Ship The Second
It'll Be Over By Christmas
A Ship With A View*
Ablation*
Arrested Development*
Credibility Problem*
Dramatic Exit, Or, Thank you And Goodnight*
Excuses And Accusations*
God Told Me To Do It*
Halation Effect*
Happy Idiot Talk*
Helpless In The Face Of Your Beauty*
Heresiarch*
Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality*
Minority Report*
Perfidy*
Sacrificial Victim*

[Canoez]

Tuxedo

I was gonna say Black Tie.

[Hwyl]

Penguin is one of the few words to make it from Celtic to English. "Pen" means "head" and "gwyn" means "white".

If it were mine and I was not locked in to calling all my boats soul music oriented names(which I am), I'd call it "Pen Gwyn"

[esingleman]

How about naming her after a type of Penguin like "Chinstrap"?

[SMARTINSEN]

Southern Lattitude

[johnw]

Magellanic.

If you don't want to spend a lot of time painting,

Tux.

[Figment]

Slick bucket.

[peter radclyffe]

The penguin's mightier than the fjord

fwiw, in the falklands war, the bored jet fighter pilots devised a game, they noticed the penguins or puffins couldnt take their eyes off the jets glinting in the sun, so, the jets flew to their left, then to their right, the eyes followed fascinated, then they flew out to sea and returned, strait over the penguins heads, the birds fell over , the jet to knock over the most birds won the game

[G.Sherman]

Burgess Meredith

[John B]

I was thinking of this thread yesterday.. there were Blue penguins everywhere. Squadrons of em.. well, fleets anyway.

[bamamick]

I appreciate the suggestions. For the time being her name is 'squonk'. If she doesn't like that one I will change it again.

I was supposed to go out on her for the first time yesterday, but once I got her rigged and ready it was capping pretty good and the halyards were bouncing off the rigs in the harbor and I just plain chickened out. I didn't want to take a chance on having trouble until I have a better feel for what I have gotten myself into, so I will try again next week.

Pretty cool little boat. Rigged as she was in 1962 with very little in the way of upgrades. I will need to rig a vang (kicking strap) as she does not have one now and I don't know if she ever has had one. I had a pretty nice surprise when I pulled a sail out of one of the bags: there was a whole mess of new Harken blocks and a couple of spools of Spectra line in the sailbag. I guess the former owner was going to upgrade the rigging and never got to it. Christmas came early!

Mickey Lake

[John B]

Squonk , I like it . It has a certain je nais ce quoi.....

[Hwyl]

It has a certain je nais ce quoi.....

I don't know what that is.

[WX]

it what you get when you sneeze on a bus and haven't got hanky

[Paul Fitzgerald]

When I was a kid I had a VJ called Zot.

[rbgarr]

I was supposed to go out on her for the first time yesterday, but once I got her rigged and ready it was capping pretty good and the halyards were bouncing off the rigs in the harbor and I just plain chickened out. I didn't want to take a chance on having trouble until I have a better feel for what I have gotten myself into, so I will try again next week.

Mickey Lake

Smart move, not going out in the breeze the first time. When I had mine I went out when it was a bit too breezy. During a tack I caught my foot in the mainsheet coil on the floorboard, lost my balance and the foot went out from under me. I sat down in the bottom of the boat to keep from going overside, but landed on top of the mainsheet. I couldn't get control of the sail quick enough and a gust whacked the boat over enough so it 'saucered'. By that, I mean the (new) lee rail dipped under and the boat filled up pretty damn fast. I had no flotation and was then stuck standing there with the hull awash up to my knees in chop. It took along time to bail the boat out because it would refill almost as fast as I bailed until I floated downwind to calmer water. I think it would have gone on the rocks but for that.

"Sailing the water" out the drains wasn't an option because the boat couldn't get up to speed even half-filled.

But you have more current experience in small boats, so you would probably have gotten out of (or not gotten into!) such a situation, or handled it better.

[Hwyl]

From Wikipedia

The earliest known written account of squonks comes from a book by William T Cox called Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts (1910). Mr. Cox's account is reprinted in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings (1969).
The legend holds that the creature's skin is ill-fitting, and covered with warts and other blemishes, and so it hides from plain sight and spends much of its time weeping. Hunters who have attempted to catch squonks have found that the creature is capable of evading capture by dissolving completely into a pool of tears and bubbles when cornered. A certain J.P. Wentling is supposed to have coaxed one into a bag, which while he was carrying it home, suddenly lightened. On inspection, he found that the bag contained only the liquid remains of the sad animal.
The "scientific name" of the squonk, Lacrimacorpus dissolvens, comes from Latin words meaning "tear", "body", and "dissolve".

[rbgarr]

... so it hides from plain sight...

Just as Gareth avoids having his photo taken. It all comes clear now! Blood will tell.

[Larks]

Squonk sounds fun, but out of all of those above I reckon 'Tuxedo' is the pick of the bunch (or even just 'Tux').

[stevedwyer]

What about the obvious... "Penguin"
or..Flipper

[WX]

I still reckon Waitaha is a good one and it is a penguin.

[Larks]

I have a mate with one in Fort Lauderdale called "Penguin Lust"

[stevedwyer]

What were the names of the penguins on the old Kool commercials?

[John B]

I don't know what that is.

Neither do I.
did I, I mean. Rumpled and covered with warts eh.

[adampet]

Besides, you couldn't use OPUS. That's the name of my Gloucester Gull.....you know...flightless seabird.

Adam

[RFNK]

Blue Socks

Rick

[floatingkiwi]

I will be up near Annapolis the middle of this month to pick up the Penguin and I have been thinking of names. Quite honestly I am about tired of having to think up names for boats and wondered if anyone else had any ideas?

She is varnished on the inside with navy topsides and bottom. Varnished spars. I thought of naming her 'Blue Jacket' because I always liked that name, but that may be a little high-horsed for a 12' boat. Other than that I am drawing a blank.

Anyone have a suggestion (other than 'Ópus'. The first person to suggest Ópus'will get a healthy raspberry thrown their way )?

Mickey Lake

Blank draw?

[floatingkiwi]

Hoiho

[bamamick]

Just got in from going out in the Penguin for the first time. I did the right thing the other day by waiting for light air. Had a good first sail and definitely learned some things.

As with any boat that weighs 150 pounds, if you are over 250 yourself you had better be careful getting in the boat for the first time, and I was. A first problem is that this wooden centerboard doesn't drop down by itself like the one on the Finn. There is a line to pull it down just like there is one to pull it up. That makes getting in a little more difficult because I basically have to get in the boat to let the board down, and that can be hairy. The only other interesting/humorous/near disastrous thing was that the light breeze I had was blowing right in on the nose with me trying to get away from the launch. NO PROBLEM, sez I, I have a set of OARS! Well, the only time I ever used oars was in Mystic last year to get to the Beetles, and that was laughable (I did my best not to soak the Bauer girls, but....). Anyway, you can't use the oars with the boom mounted and the sail on. I wound up sculling and that worked great. I will figure out the oar thing later.

As it is with the Finn, in this light air I figured that the easiest way to sail upwind was with me standing. I had been told that I may want to move the thwart forward and I do. I want to do that and get a longer tiller extension so that I can get my weight forward. The only hairy time I had was trying to tack with me sitting on the centerboard truck and getting tangled up. The mainsheet cleat was stuck in my butt, the sheet was all over, and the boom is just the wrong height with me sitting there. I made a few adjustments and things went more smoothly.

I need to rig the vang because in that light air I think that you can play the main using the vang on this boat and not touch the sheet. I need to swap out the blocks and main cleat for something designed in the last 50 years. I am all about tradition, but not to the point that things don't work smoothly. Just a few things. I haven't found this 'new' sail that I was supposed to get with the boat. It's not one of the two I have used so far, but that's o.k. I have a buddy who is a sailmaker .

I like it. It moves well in light air, and of course when I did have a puff or two to work with it was easy to balance out. I will go again Friday and try to go at least once a week from now on. Time in the boat will give me a whole lot better feel for things.

At least the Coast Guard didn't have to come out this time.

Mickey Lake

[johngsandusky]

Tinkering is half the fun.