salty what?!!
We didn’t have a name in our back pocket waiting to slap it on a boat. Sure, we had brainstormed, but nothing seemed to stick. Finally, we found her. A 1976 Kelly Peterson KP44 by the name of “Tango” and a cutie, she was. The purchasing process was longer than usual, having an offer accepted before I left for a month of Clipper training and travel in Europe and not going through the survey/sea trial process until after I returned to the states. After the sea trial, we had a better sense of her spirit, kicked off the purchase paperwork process, and waited. A lot of time lapsed having a sense of her spirit, but now knowing her intimately and, ultimately, no names felt just right.
Every now and then, we would chat about potential boat names over our morning coffee or dinner. We liked Tango, but it wasn’t exactly us. Being a part of the NATO phonetic alphabet, we could imagine a world of chaotic radio calls where we are trying to provide the boat name and the other end waiting on other characters to follow. Some may say we swung too far in the other direction by choosing a name that nobody can pronounce much less define, but we think we landed in just the right spot.
Finally, the paperwork came back I saw the blank space starting back at me…”vessel name.” Sure, we could have adopted her as Tango and later kicked off another round of paperwork to rename her, but I don’t personally love paperwork all that much and knew that we would put it off if it wasn’t a priority. The path of least resistance was at our finger tips with someone else to process the name change for US Coast Guard registration and purchase at the same time. Sounds easy enough, right?!!
Wrong. We put all the pressure on ourselves to produce perfection. And quick(!) as to not slow the purchase process down. We desired a sense of connection to the name, even going as far as prompting Chat GPT to ask us questions and brainstorm names based on our answers. We crowd sourced ideas from some of our trusted inner circle. Still nothing. Jared being a desert rat from Arizona, and us having met there, a lot of our ideas centered around a desert theme. Desert, but make it nautical.
By some miracle, “Salty Saguaro” came out in a brainstorming session. It ticked most of the boxes: Personal connection? Check. Nautical? Check. Oh and alliteration, because who doesn’t love alliteration? Check. We trusted our gut and wrote it in on the paperwork. Then the fun really started. Living in our excitement, we started socializing the name only to get one of two reactions: 1) “Love it, it’s perfectly you!” OR 2) confused look followed by “Salty what? What’s a saguaro?”
A moment of education: a saguaro is the iconic cactus of the Sonoran Desert region (which Arizona is a part of). It’s name originated in Ópata, a language spoken by peoples of the Sonoran Desert region of Mexico. Fast forward to Mexican settlers of the American southwest bringing the name over to the English language. When we’re faced with the question, we usually say the iconic cactus of Arizona and hold our arms up like a cactus. A couple chuckles and we move on in the conversation.
Salty Saguaro may not be the easiest to spell and is often shortened to “Salty” over the ship’s radio, but we still love it. It’s a little bit of home, our story, and a vision of where we’re going. Not to worry, we performed proper de- and re-naming ceremonies. Amongst some other valuable books, the former owner was kind enough to leave one that had the ceremony script details so we’d do it right. It’s supposedly bad luck to change the name without proper ceremony! This vessel is our home, not just a boat, and this cactus is going exploring!
