Code Name Tapatahi

The importance of being Ernest. 

We've all past loads of boats with names anything from mildly amusing to ridiculous to bordering the offensive. Apologies if yours falls into these camps.

Flat​ Bottomed Gal is one of my least favourite. 

Madasa-Soles

Kids inheritance

Llamedos (read it backwards)

Norfolk Enchants 

Norfolk 'n' Goode

Farkem Hall

Fircombe Hall

Wet Dream

Cirrhosis of the River

Yeah but, no, but

Every variable of MeAndEr

Just too many ... Lady or Lady...

Maybe it's just me but with new boats approaching the best part of £180k  cruising in Flat Bottomed Gal just seems kinda wrong.

So we've put quite a lot of thought​ into our boats name. Trying to think of the ethos behind the plans and how we're trying to live.

The closest I could come up with was TAPATAHI. Maori for Simplicity. A simple life and a simple boat build, nothing too complicated and nothing unnecessarily techy. I'd even researched a Maori symbols and how they could be included in the paint work and possibly interior art and carved wood.

But... I also had a fairly clear vision in my mind's eye of what I wanted the boat to look like and this wasn't going to work. We'd chosen the Builder, looked closely at his work and influences from his decades of not only building but previously actually working the boats and the fact that we wanted an industrial edge to our shell and interior and TAPATAHI just wasn't working.

What we needed was an actual name, not just words, translations or anagrams and hashed conglomerations. 

Our boat is going to be a bit of a bruiser, big old thumper of a British ex industrial plant engine and it had me remembering a tale a few Christmases ago of a mad dash across fields in South Wales.

It was towards the end of the WW2 a hospital full of mothers and babies, no one about to ward off the air attack and only one visiting soldier to man the twin Lewis guns. Hanging on to the out of control twin guns he recalled with a grin that most of the shells were headed in roughly the right direction. It was highly probable that the fighter aircraft were keeping all their ammunition for a bigger target. They could well have been on their way to the Swansea Blitz towards the end of February (the month was right but it may have been a year earlier). 

Apart from a brief hospital visit it was to be the one of the last conversations I had with my grandad. In that Welsh wartime hospital, my nan and newly born mum.

I think he'd have liked Narrowboat Ernest

Ernest Baker 15th June 1917 to 13th January 2016