What's In A Name?

When life gives you lemons..well you know the rest.  Several years ago we were given what looked like a large basket of lemons.  We had left comfortable jobs, sold our home in Illinois and moved to a new state to follow an opportunity that would change our lives forever.  And it did, just not in the way that we thought it would.  Now we had some decisions to make.  Do we go back to Illinois or look for other alternatives?  We chose door number two.

Many years ago while enjoying one of our charters in the BVI we had dreamt of living on a boat and sailing away.  At the time it was just a pipe dream, nothing that we ever really felt would happen.  But under the current circumstances, it seemed like a viable choice to throw into the mix.  We started looking at boats on Yacht World and putting together a list of boats that would suit our needs.  Mark spent time flying to Florida to look at boats while we finished the house we had purchased to flip. 

Our ideal boat was in the 40 to 42 foot range with two cabins.  We really wanted to pay cash and as we had the ability to rehab a boat a little sweat equity was ok.  After a couple of months of searching we found the perfect boat, a Baba 40, just the right price and ready to go.  She had been on the market for 6 month and the seller had taken incredible care of her.  We waited a day after seeing her and called the owner to tell him we would take it, only to find out he had sold it that morning. Sad but resigned we continued the search.  We eventually found a Perry 47 in need of much love.  She was bigger than we wanted and a lot more work than we had hoped but the price was right and the engine was brand new so we went for it.

For reasons that I will never understand the previous owner had named her Wet Dream.  Maybe it was the myriad of leaks that she had or perhaps he was just gross, I'll never know.  I'm leaning toward the latter as he had called the dinghy the Wet Spot.  As you can imagine, that had to change.  But what to name her? 

We spent a couple of weeks making lists of names and talking about our situation.  Mark said that this new plan felt like being a child again, shirking responsibilities and not growing up.  I said it sounded like a case of Peter Pan syndrome.  He immediately suggested Neverland.  Now as Michael Jackson had ruined that name with his choices I decided against that one.  But Peter Pan still fit, we were on the road to Neverland.

As most know from the story, one would set a course for the second star to the right and straight on til morning to reach Neverland.  So Wet Dream became Second Star.