On July 15th, 2017 we held our Renaming Ceremony & Open House aboard Mosaic. This was a project that we’d been working on for months involving a lot of details and, namely, getting the new name on the stern of the vessel.

Here’s the previous name, complete with actual graphic of Ariel, The Little Mermaid, in the flourish of the “A”.

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Getting access to the rear of the boat in order to remove the old name proved more of a challenge than we anticipated. You see, our boat is built like a tank, she’s big and tough and I feel safe living aboard her, but she is very difficult to drive backwards in anything resembling a purposeful direction. She backs up, and goes to port (left). That’s about as good as it gets. This isn’t too big of an issue really. Its something that we know and understand about our boat and can work with in most circumstances. Our home slip is easy enough to reverse out of and get moving forward in the proper direction to exit the marina. We dock bow in (head first) and tie up with the front of the boat facing the main dock.

However, this configuration wasn’t conducive to getting any work done on the stern of the boat so we had to come up with a plan.

We had a lesson with a licensed captain in June and we planned to have him help us back her into the slip at the end of the day so that we could work on the name. We figured that a lot of our issue with backing the boat in a purposeful direction was due to our inexperience. Turns out that’s not the case. Even our hired captain couldn’t make her ‘behave’ in reverse. We didn’t get her backed into the slip at the end of that lesson- and that left us in a pickle.

So, we decided that the best way to go about getting her turned around was to get a few friends over to help us, back out of the slip, have tons of lines ready to throw to the various dock fingers, and muscle her back into the slip. So with Brenden at the helm, me on deck running lines, and three friends on various dock fingers, we executed the plan beautifully and managed to get Mosaic settled stern in. Phew!

So Brenden’s biggest boat project yet was ahead of him and he ended up spending several hours after work each day for a week working on grinding off the old vinyl name and then cleaning and polishing the stern to prepare it for the new name decal.

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We had ordered our name decal several weeks or possibly even months earlier from Do It Yourself Lettering and we were very happy with the product. We wouldn’t have to try to line up each individual letter and they had a great selection of colors, fonts, and other options. Plus their turn around time from order to shipping and delivery was great. We’ll likely use them again for future needs. (I’d like to get the name or maybe a logo on each side of the bow!)…

It was an exciting day when this package arrived in the mail!

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So we spent hours cleaning and preparing the inside and outside of the boat for the big day. We’d invited friends, family, and coworkers out to check out our new home. We set the party for Saturday July 15th and left the timeframe open from 2pm to dark so that hopefully anybody interested could work it into their day to come see what living on a 40 foot sailboat with 2 young kids is really all about.

And, true to form, Brenden and I were still trying to finish getting ready, Brenden was actually still applying the name to the stern!, when our first guests arrived! Ha!

We had an amazing turn out with probably about 50 people visiting throughout the day, touring the boat, chatting about our grand plans and seeing what it’s all about. I’m not actually sure what time it was that evening that we finally decided it was time to do the ceremony! So we brought out the champagne and gathered on the bow and at the dock for the speeches.

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Renaming

And then, we finally were able to reveal the new name and declare her to be SV Mosaic!

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She’s our home, a huge part of our lives now, and I love her dearly. We’ve been living aboard for a year and I couldn’t be happier with the direction that we’ve decided to steer our lives. It will take time, and a lot of planning, to get where we want to go. We’ve got so much to learn, but when I look back at where we were three years ago when this dream took root, I can’t help but be proud of what we’ve accomplished.

Mosaic has a history, a depth about her- it’s like she’s got a soul and Brenden and I both felt it when we first saw her in San Diego. There’s something about this ol’ sailboat that makes me trust in her and I know that if we have the heart, if we put in the time and learn the things we need to learn, she can take us anywhere in the world and open the door to a whole different life than I ever imagined I could live. We just need to be brave enough to reach out and take it.

As always, thanks for reading this blog post, and I hope you’ll follow along on our Mosaic Voyage Facebook Page to keep up with current events and our sailing adventures! We are a family of four currently living aboard our 40 foot sailboat in the Pacific Northwest. We have cruising goals and plan to travel the world. Hope you’ll follow along on our adventure and gain inspiration of your own, as we’ve done from others! Thanks! ~Rachel