9.03.2012

Boat Swag

This month's RaftUp revolves around boat 'swag'. The things we have on board with our boat's name, things we wish we had, and things we've seen other owners carrying that we covet.
I'll have to start off by saying that while everything on Celebration says Celebration on it somewhere, we weren't responsible for it. (I do mean EVERYTHING: every piece of wood, all the doors, the picture frames, the carpet pieces, sheets, towels, everything. One of her two previous owners got seriously happy using an engraver and a magic marker.)  Maybe because we see her name on stuff all day, every day, we don't feel the need to add any more. 
I looked into some L.L.Bean totes when we first bought Celebration. I thought they'd be nice to give as gifts to guests who came to stay. Fortunately for me, as they were very expensive, Celebration has one too many letters to fit on the bags. Fortunately, also, because while lots of people say they're going to visit, very few do. My SIL, Patty and my BFF, Kathy would each have half a dozen and the rest would be mouldering under the v berth.

My box of boat cards, arranged alphabetically by boat name.

The only 'swag' item I can think of that we can't do without, are boat cards. For the non-boater, these are business sized cards with our boat name, our names and email and blog addresses. Boaters exchange these as a way to keep in touch since few of us have land addresses and even fewer of us have phones that work in all the countries where we meet.  Boat cards vary from the plain and simple printed on paper, to the custom printed with boat photo kind.  My favorite are the ones that have the boat make and size on them, as Steve and I usually have differing memories of just what was what, especially after a few months.  I like to write on the cards we get, where and when we met, what was going on, kids, pets, an obnoxiousnous rating if required, "red shirt, cute shoes", that kind of thing, just to jog my memory.
I've seen some boat shirts that I really like, with the name and make embroidered on the upper left. I've even priced some. But then I do the mental scales: rum/wine on one side and nifty shirts on the other. The rum always wins.

3 comments:

Anne and Chris said...

Okay, you guys really are waaay too organized (as I look at the pile of business/author cards we collected this summer strewn across the table). I need you to come to Mr Mac and perform your organizational miracles, because we're planning to reorganize our passage and pullman berths soon!

Anne and Chris said...

Ha! I just realized that we've got the same pictures of our boats on our blog pages - moored at Waderick Wells. That water was just too pretty not to use in a photo!

LisaPB said...

Love the blog.