I appreciate the question asked in this thread about how we picked the name for our boat. I bought my 1998 26X in late 2003. I live in Florida and the boat was in Michigan near where my son lived. He checked it out for me and thought it was in good shape. At my wife's urging, I flew up and took a look at it on November 11 (Veteran's Day) and, with her blessing and encouragement, made an offer on it, which was accepted. I flew back up and took delivery with a U-Haul truck on December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day), stayed with my son and his fiance (now wife) for a couple of nights, then started the long drive home. I stopped in Louisville to visit a cousin, in Chattanooga to visit my Dad and step-mom and another cousin, then on home. Each family member was happy for me and were excited to see the new boat. As I drove I considered many names, mostly those associated with childhood cowboy heroes--Tonto (the Lone Ranger's sidekick), Topper (Hopalong Cassidy's white horse), Slainte (the Irish toast for "good health"), and Fleche Blanc (White Arrow in French). As I ponder all of these names and others through the holidays that year, I was around many of my family members, who represent a wide variety of world views and have many various opinions about religion and current affairs, but somehow manage to not let any of the differences keep them from being loving toward each other. As I observed my family during all of this I thought to myself one day that we had a great American family spirit. With all of the chaos in the world, we were able to be good Americans to each other, and I think, by and large, to folks outside the family, too. I thought, "Gee, I wish I could name my boat "American Family Spirit" to capture that good feeling, but I realized (1) that is way too long and (2) way too hokey for a boat name. At age 59, I pretty much knew this would be my last, best, most expensive and largest boat--my dream boat---so the name had to be really special. I thought, "Well, I could just shorten it to "American Spirit", and that sounded good. It fit with the Veteran's Day and Pearl Harbor Day connection, as well. We did the protocol for the name change and ordered the graphics and put it on. It sounds great on the VHF radio, and I get some "high fives" from folks from time to time. I did get mistaken by a bridge tender for a river cruise ship of the same name one time, but it worked out OK.
- the Mac looks huge on the trailer but on the water, she is often the baby of the anchorage you are in and thats where the little part comes in.... 
and have already stripped out everything bearing the old name and will erase the imprint of the name on the sides when I clean and resurface it in April... I got the boat with one name and changed it because my wife at the time didn't like its name- we did the whole superstitious denaming and renaming ceremonies, too.
is one of my children. Jokingly of course. It was only fitting to name her the name my son would have gotten, if he would have been a girl. So my boats name is Grace....
