Tractatus becomes Mystic ~ Changing The Name Of Our Boat

We purchased our beautiful 1966 Pearson Alberg 35, in October, 2012. We found her after an exhaustive two year search that took us to Illinois, Indiana, Vermont, Connecticut, Florida, Wisconsin, and Michigan. When we found her, she was stored at Vinette Boat Works in Escanaba, Michigan.  The name on her hull was TRACTATUS. Before we knew she would be ours, we agreed that her current name had to go. We did some research and learned that there can be frightening consequences to changing a boat's name. Nautical folklore warns that it will anger the Sea Gods and bring us bad luck. This belief stemmed from the fact that changing a boats name brought attention in the form of the tax man because it was usually a sign that the boat had been sold. We've heard that one way to ward off the bad luck is to have a virgin pee in our bilge during a re-naming ceremony. We did not relish this particular remedy but we did not wish to anger the Sea Gods and we certainly didn't wish for any bad luck. It's a good thing that there are other options for avoiding the wrath of Neptune.

So where does one begin to go about changing a boat's name?  We started with picking a new one. We mulled over the few options we had been considering. Meanderer has always been one of Dave's favorites. Recently, he had added my legal name to the list, Madeline. He reasoned that it could also be in reference to beautiful Madeline Island on Lake Superior. We wanted a beautiful name for our beautiful boat.

In addition to finding a new name for Tractatus, we needed to know how to change the name through the registration process. We knew that Tractatus was documented with the US Coast Guard. We searched the USCG website for instructions on how to re-document a boat and found that we could look up details of this boat by using the documentation number. To our surprise and delight we learned that Tractatus was not the original name. Bill Wildman had changed the boat's name when he purchased and documented it. Before our Alberg 35 was named Tractatus, she was known as Mystic.

Mystic is the perfect name for our boat. The moment we learned the history of Tractatus, we knew, that she was meant to be ours. We have a personal connection to Mystic, Connecticut. It is the beautiful town where I grew up. It is filled with nautical history recreated in an authentic Seaport. 

Our fears of angering the Sea Gods diminished greatly when we realized we were giving our boat her name back. Surely, this would be favorable to them. When we were in Escanaba to complete the purchase of this boat we asked Bill Wildman how he came up with the name Tractatus which is latin for treatise. Bill did not explain why he used this name or what it meant to him. He simply said there were already several boats on Lake Michigan with the name Mystic. We told him we considered renaming the boat Madeline, but decided to change it back to Mystic. He just smiled. I think he understood and he definitely agreed that Mystic was fitting for such a beautiful vessel.

Change the name of our boat turned out to be the easy part. Making it happen was not quite so simple. Dave prepared the detailed paperwork and sent it off to the Coast Guard in November. We hoped to get the documentation updated in time for our trip from Escanaba to Knife River.  Dave checked the website weekly for the status. Apparently the USCG was months behind in processing documentation requests. After several delays, we were officially documented owners of sailing vessel MYSTIC.

We were planning to move Tractatus to Knife River in the spring.  We could not change the name on the stern until the documentation matched the name.  It turned out we would have to move our new boat to MN with the name Tractatus and the home port of Escanaba on the stern.  We arrived in Knife River, MN on July 6, 2013.  Our USCG documentation did not arrive until the end of July.  Finally, it was time to make our boat Mystic again.  We wanted to do this right!  Dave spent a bit of time researching fonts to find just the right look for the naming ceremony. That's right; there is a ceremony involved in renaming a boat.

http://www.boatnames.com.au/boat-naming-renaming-ceremony.htm

After reading about a variety of ways to de-name/re-name a boat, we decided to create our own celebration which included chanting to the Gods of Water and Wind, and champagne toasts. The internet provided traditional chants and we improvised with our offerings to the Gods as we saw fit.

During the ceremony, Dave removed the name Tractatus off the stern of our Alberg 35.  Next, we invoked the name of the ruler of the deep and requested the purging of the old name, forevermore. We poured champagne on the bow of the boat and toasted the de-naming phase.

Mounting our boat's new name took about an hour, as Dave fussed over the perfect placement of 'Mystic' on our hull. Once this was completed, we chanted and asked for the blessings of Poisedon, and the Gods of Wind, The Great Boreas, The Great Zephyrus, The Great Eurus, and The Great Norus. We poured champagne overboard in all directions, first North, then West, East and South as we chanted our humble request for fair weather. Satisfied that we had respectfully returned our boat's identity, we each drank of the ceremonial bottle and rejoiced our successful re-naming of sailboat Mystic. We are very excited to be able to say we are going to 'Mystic' for the weekend.