On the 31st of October Arent turned 40-ish. That means birthday songs, a homemade cake, best wishes and, if at all possible, a huge party. As he (and we) don’t know that many people in this part of the world yet, we decided to take him to the party of the year on Tahaa: Halloween at the Taravana Yacht Club.

But before we went there, we had an important ritual of our own to perform…

Naming Helena

Last weekend, after the “disco”-debacle, as we were having drinks on the boat, we got to talking about all the things that had been broken, repaired, replaced, etc. Somehow we finally deduced that this had to be some sort of curse. And we also knew why: Rolf had renamed the boat two years ago without the official, ancient renaming ritual. Now that’s asking for trouble! And the only solution: to redo the renaming and have a proper ritual now.

According to legend, each and every vessel is recorded by name in the Ledger of the Deep and is known personally to Poseidon the god of the sea and Aeolus, god of the wind. Therefore  to change the name of the boat we first had to purge the old name from the Ledger of the Deep and from Poseidon’s memory, replace it with the new name and then get it blessed by Poseidon and Aeolus. So on Saturday night we invoked the gods of the sea and the winds, spilled virgin blood on the bow, spoke ancient rhymes and generously provided libations.

We hope that from now on the gods will favor Helena with steady seas, fair winds and more great voyages.