BOATS HAVE SOULS AND PERSONALITIES

BOATS HAVE SOULS AND PERSONALITIES

Lewis Keizer

We like to think we own a boat. But for good or for ill, we are also owned by the boat. Each of the eight boats that have owned me had a soul and a personality. So it is with all boats, power and sail. I took care of each one and passed it on in better condition than I had received it, and for that reason my boats always took care of me.

The somewhat inefficient placement of port and starboard navigation lights on the bows of modern boats is probably rooted in the ancient tradition of painting eyes on both bows. This honored and symbolized the soul of the boat, keeping a good lookout, and warding off danger at sea.

What is the soul of a boat? Well, first we must understand that soul is mind or consciousness. Everything created and built by us—cars, boats, houses, computers—has its own kind of intelligence or soul. But boats are way more soulful than cars, which have been around for only a century. Boats were being constructed by prehistoric cultures many thousands of years ago. More than any other human artifact, from earliest times boats were regarded as living beings with souls. Modern boat design has grown and evolved over the ages, and every modern boat shares in this psychic heritage.

The soul of a boat is rooted in an ancient, invisible, and ever-evolving reality of mathematics and esthetics committed to paper by a designer. It is immutable and doesn’t change with each new owner. Alberg designs draw from one kind of soul; Nathanael Herreshoff designs draw from another. By contrast, the personality of a boat is different even for boats of the same design, being dependent upon the physical build of that design done with variations of quality and detail by human hands. It can improve under the care of a knowledgeable owner or degrade through the neglect or poor seamanship of a boat abuser.

Whatever name is given to a boat merely reflects the mentality of its legal owner, not the boat. 

You can name your boat something flippant like Breaking Wind, but it doesn’t reflect its soul. The same boat will have many owners and many names.

But naming a boat can be a modern way of representing the soul and personality of that individual vessel. Boats have been traditionally referred to as “she” and given female names, probably because sailors and owners were men and women were considered to bring bad luck to a voyage. The male relationship with a boat was like a marriage with mutual responsibilities—I take care of you, and you take care of me. So men have often named their boats after women.

But souls don’t have gender and neither do boats. Today many responsible boat owners are women. In fact, looking online through ten thousand current boat names at http://10000boatnames.com/, the majority of them are genderless names like Andiamo, Carpe Diem, or Escapade. There are also many male names like Orion or Popeye.

A walk through any marina reveals that there are responsible boat owners and boat abusers. Responsible owners make themselves knowledgeable so they can improve their boats, but abusers neglect and kill them. The personality of a boat—its performance, cosmetics, and market value—can be cultivated and improved by human ownership, but the invisible soul of a boat remains unchanged. Therefore it is the soul of a neglected good old boat—not the visible personality—that calls out to a sailor who falls in love with it and devotes himself to restoring it and bringing it back to life.

Boats have life-cycles. With love and care, they live long and grow old gracefully, but neglected they age prematurely and die. New boats straight from the factory have immature adolescent personalities with sawdust in fuel tanks, loose bolts in the bilge, and all kinds of issues that reveal themselves on a shakedown cruise. But as a new owner works to improve his boat’s personality, the vessel matures. It becomes more reliable, trustworthy, comfortable, and serviceable, and its invisible soul begins to shine brightly through its physical personality in performance and esthetics. There may be many pretty boats of the same design out there, but this especially loved one becomes the boat that turns heads and gets photographed.

My new-to-me Cape Dory 28 was maintained beautifully by the original owner from the time he took possession of it in 1978. He named it Levon after his Chesapeake Bay retriever and cruised it all over the Pacific several times.

A boat named after a dog? I don’t like to change boat names, but did I want to keep the name Levon? Did I want a boat with the soul of a dog, no matter how noble a dog it may have been?

But after a little internet research, I found that Levon is an Armenian name that means Lion and is pronounced “Lee-von,” like English Leon. Aha! A boat with the soul of a lion! I could live with that (especially since it came with the name already monogrammed on dishware, towels, and blankets). So my boat has a male name and is not a she, but a he. Our relationship will not be like a marriage, but a close friendship.

I started out by cheering up Levon’s personality with a complete new chain plate installation, dodger, canvas, and electrical upgrades including a windlass. Levon was quite attached to his original owner, but now he is so grateful for what I’m doing to give him another thirty-five years of life that he has taken quite a shine to me. I will take care of him, and he will take care of me out on the water.

Do I talk to Levon? Sometimes with words, but mostly in the silent communion of a singlehander. I admire his handsome Carl Alberg lines and rugged strength, solid hull, and intelligent, seakindly motion. We sail together, and that says it all.