Sailboats? In east Tennessee?

(Actually, we have quite a few on our two TVA lakes but that's not the reason for this entry.)

I was working up a draft, the other day, and part of the story involves naming a sailboat.(Set in the Gulf of Mexico the story is about an adventure of Seymour Hemingway and Audrey Wilde.) Of course, all boats have names. Seymour had to come up with a name for his new boat since the previous sailboat (the Busted Flush) was sunk by Katrina. Any good sea story, over the years, has immortalized the names of the boats. So, I decided to list a few of the ones I've read.

I am not a sailor. My cousin had a sailboat that we (his dad, actually) rebuilt and sailed at their summer home in northern Michigan. It gets in your blood. We'd go to the boat show at McCormick Place in Chicago and just dream and dream and dream. I grew up in the midwest where most of the U.S. Navy comes from (including my brother) --it's how we got to see the world-- and now living in the hills of east Tennessee I get to see the ocean on our annual birding trips to the South Carolina coast.

In no particular order: Hornblower and the Hotspur by C.S. Forester. I have the entire Hornblower series. Read 'em with fascination as a kid. The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes. Innes wrote wild, complicated adventures. Mary Deare is one of my oldest books. HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean. MacLean wrote this largely autobiographical story of his WW2 service in the convoys from Scotland to Murmansk, Russia. It is both vivid and scary. The Ghost is Wolf Larsen's boat that rescues then kidnaps Jack London in the Sea Wolf. For all the mystery readers in the world, is there any other boat besides the Busted Flush, Travis McGee's houseboat? John Wayne probably wasn't much of a sailor but his sailboat was in The Wake of the Red Witch.

Hotspur
Mary Deare
Ulysses
Ghost
Busted Flush
Red Witch

Any suggestions? Contact me at cfm46@mounet.com