How Indigo Moon Got Her Name

When we bought the boat, it was already named Kariann after the owner's wife. Of course, we wanted to rename the boat with a name of our own that would truly make her ours. Sounds easy, right? Well believe it or not, naming our boat was one of the most difficult things we encountered after deciding to make the purchase. We had just a few short weeks before the closing on the boat to choose a name, because the new name had to be submitted on our documentation application, etc. It surely must be more difficult than naming a child. For children, you want the name to sound nice and be a normal name free from future ridicule. Naming a boat takes into account many factors: the name must be somewhat unique, yet easy to say and spell, have some meaning to the owners, and fit the feel of the boat, etc.

It would be fun to create a fanciful story as to how Indigo Moon got her name, but the truth is, after mulling over a few thousand names and driving ourselves crazy thinking about it for weeks, Indigo Moon just felt right and was conceived more from frustration than inspiration. We gave up on trying to fashion cute and clever names most people strive for - we utterly failed at such attempts. Something that sounded good, funny or clever one day sounded stupid or tacky a few days later. We were running out of time.

You can probably imagine some of the things we considered. Of course there were all the "double" names that we could choose, having a catamaran with two hulls, such as Double Trouble, Double up, Double Down, On the Double, Double Vision, Double Dare, Dynamic Duo, etc. Then there were the catamaran "cat" names such as Cat's Pajamas, Cajun Kitty, Happy Cat, Purrfect and being such a Sean Connery era James Bond fan, Buddy finally suggested Pussy Galore. It all got more and more ridiculous the harder we tried.

Finally, out of sheer frustration, we began thinking "outside the box" and started discussing abstract ideas about what our favorite things are in nature. Attacking the problem from that angle, we arrived at her name in short order: Indigo Moon. Buddy has always loved being far offshore in true blue indigo water. Melissa fancies the moon and all things belonging to Mother Nature. Accordingly, Indigo Moon combines two of our very favorite things and we agreed that it fits the boat's personality. Close seconds on the name list included Island Girl, Lucky Star and Sweet Melissa.

Of course, nicknames for her have already surfaced and we now find ourselves saying we are "going to The Moon" for the weekend, or "we had a good time on The Moon last weekend." So, The Moon and also, Go Go have become shortcut nicknames.