Just pick a name. No big deal right? In practice, we found naming our boat to be harder than naming our children. We felt strongly about having a boat with a name that might lend itself to a personality…Mostly so we could address her by name – or praise or blame her for random acts that we probably should attribute to someone else! We were told that as we traveled and met other cruisers we would become known by our boat name so we should be thoughtful and decided to lay out some guidelines to help us narrow down our choices. They were:
- Should be meaningful to us
- Should reflect something about us
- Should be compatible with the boat
- Should be one or two words
- Should be easy to spell and pronounce over the radio
- Should not be too witty or silly
- Should not be a cliché or double entendre
- Should not be too common
- The domain name should be available (preferably a “.com”)
After some months and a few spirited debates, we arrived at MIRA. Here’s how we got there. While researching, we realized that Antares (among other things) is also the name of a star in the constellation Scorpio. But it’s not just any star, it’s actually a twin star (technically a “binary star”) because it consists of two stars perpetually orbiting around each other. Catamaran => 2 hulls => 2 stars.
Check.
Also, after 32 years of wedded bliss, we could relate to this “perpetually orbiting” symbolism.
Check.
It turns out (according to Wikipedia) there are hundreds of binary stars out there and one of them is Mira in the constellation Cetus, the whale. Nautical theme.
Check.
According to NASA. Mira is known for its amazingly long tail – similar to a “boat wake”.
Check.
In Spanish, Mirar is the verb to look, to observe, to view. This also seemed to fit well since we’ll be traveling and exploring new places aboard her.
Check….and Mira the catamaran was born.
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Armed with a name, we then had some fun working with graphic designers around the world via 99Designs to come up with a representative logo for Mira. Here’s the end result…
Mira catamaran blog 