Struana

It was not so easy choosing a name. Starting point was the brand X-Yachts which has led many an owner incorporating an X somewhere in the name, ideally kicking off with the X. So the immediate issue was that there are not that many words/names starting with an X. Previously names such as X-calibur or Exuberance have been rather good choices or my favourite, Xi Nix, the name of a Dutch yacht for which you have to understand Dutch and probably be Dutch to appreciate the humour... (Xi Nix comes from 'k zie niks or more correctly ik zie niks which translates into English as I don't see anything with an undertone of "I don't see j**k sh*t"). Xenophobia sprang to mind but that would have been a bit of a contradiction.

Then there is the Roxana, Roxette, Roxy, etc, collection. Problem here was that Part 1 registration in the UK required a unique name, or in any case a name which did not appear as yet in the registry. We did like Roxy a lot but it was not long after Maria came up with this name that an X-442 appeared for sale elsewhere, also named Roxy. So it was already taken effectively, regardless of Part 1 registration. Can't have two X-442s of the same colour with the same name. It would be a bit like matter and anti-matter, everything's fine until you meet and then....? Really unexpected things could happen after a night out.

I did consider Disco Inferno as a follow up on Disco 2000 which is the name of our 420, bought in 1996 in Scotland and borrowing from the song with the same name by Pulp. But, while Disco Inferno is cool under most circumstances, should things ever go wrong and you find yourself radioing for assistance, Disco Inferno comes across as silly at best.

So it was back in time, to the 90's, for the final burst of inspiration. Maria and I met halfway through the 1990's when we were both working in Aberdeen, Scotland. We led somewhat tough lives spending most of our time on oil rigs as our employer Schlumberger ensured it got maximum service out of its employees. So we met and did happily manage to spend a lot of happy moments together marching across the Scottish Highlands, notwithstanding the dreadful telephone calls on Sunday mornings with instructions to be at the heliport within 90 minutes to fly offshore and help get a drill pipe unstuck, etc. Such trips could mean anything between five days and three weeks offshore, and it was usually the latter (my particular role would be to lower some explosives down the drill pipe, sever the pipe just above the place where it was stuck, and then the drilling co could take some other actions to get the stuck bit free. Usually it meant an endless amount of effort to be able to resume drilling, with my contribution being to get the pipe loose every time it got stuck again...).

To return to the Highlands, our moments there allowed us to endlessly talk about, discuss, argue over and debate our future since the oil services life style, though tremendously exciting, did not really appeal that much to us for the longer term. Well, Singapore did play a central role in what happened next but really, our plans were born on those damp and grey days wearing down our hiking boots along the top of ridges and along the endless streams of the Highlands. "From the stream" as it were, for which there is a rather elegant word in Gaelic: "Struana". So Struana ends our search and her port of registry will be Aberdeen.