BOAT NAMES POINT TO RECOVERY

By Barb Hansen
June 2011


You can tell a lot about a person by the name on their boat. For example, a couple of years ago I strongly advised a certain literary celebrity, Juliet Capulet, to never date a guy with a boat named Sir Osis of the River, Beeracuda, or Blew Too Much.

Now I'm looking at the popular boat name lists from BoatU.S. and it occurs to me the names don't just tell us about the psychological condition of the boat owners; they speak to us about the psychological condition of the nation's economy.

Indeed, they are a proxy for the mood of the country and point to a change in direction for the economy and perhaps the stock market, too. Up or down. I call it call it the Boat Name Mood Meter (BNMM)

So what is the BNMM telling us? I think it's telling us that the economy is recovering.

The first thing I do is delete the names on the top 10 list that are on the list every year. Those recurring names don't tell us anything. So, goodbye Seas the Day, AquaHolic, The Black Pearl, La Belle Vita.

Last year's list reverberated with a bad attitude. That top ten list had boat names like Lazy Daze, Bail Out, On the Rocks.

Now, compare them with the names on the new list: Andiamo (Let's go), Mojo, Island Time, Second Wind, No Worries, Serenity, Blue Moon.

Don't you see what's happening? Boat owners are tossing out the negative and accentuating the positive. They are feeling better. Much better. You should, too.

So is it time to buy stocks or bonds or what?

Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that it's time to invest in time on the water. Being on the water is the great escape. It's the rhythmic flap of wind on a sail, the harmonic charm of a well-tuned cruising engine, the excitement on a boat when a big fish is landed, the soothing feeling you get watching a colorful sunrise or a sunset.

Time on the boat doesn't make problems go away but it does gives us the mental fortitude and the right attitude to deal with matters back on land.

You may have read that Tiger Woods is selling his 155-footer, Privacy, and replacing it with a smaller vessel. He calls it Solitude. The Tiger Woods case may not be the best example but it helps to illustrate that even when times are tough boaters don't give up on boating entirely.

Some sail. Some cruise. Some fish. Some paddle into remote backcountry areas where few have gone before. Some seek solitude. Some socialize. Some go fast from here to there. Some go slow to nowhere. Heck, some never leave the dock. But on the water, they feel good.

So is it time? Oh, yeah. Memorial day signals the start of a new summer. Fishing and Boating Week is June 4-12. Father's Day is June 19.

The stars are aligned. It's time to be on the water. You can check the Dow when you get back in. Meanwhile, it's nice to know that the Boat Name Mood Meter is trending sharply up. You know what to do.