Boat names: Pumpkin, Great Pumpkin, Sweet Baby Chico, Demon Splat

Alaska Dream Adventures currently has 91 boats (mostly kayaks, but some canoes) in its fleet. A few of the rental boats have names, and, as we're just about to take steps to catapult Alaska Dream Adventures into a much bigger business, we plan to name the remaining Nameless Ones. Want to know how a few of them got their names?

The first boat I personally named was Pumpkin, my orange XP9. She was named for her color and because I fell in love with her right away, and "Pumpkin" is also a term of endearment. Her big sister, the orange XP10 naturally became the Great Pumpkin. (She's Pumpkin, only bigger, and "Great Pumpkin" is, of course, a reference to the Peanuts comic strip.)

Sweet Baby Chico is a Jefe Chico. The first time we took him down Rock Creek (a shallow, rocky little run with lots of fun and active paddling), he got a hole or five in the bottom of the boat and we kept having to stop and bail. We tried patching it, but we hadn't brought the equipment with us, as the run only takes an hour. Sweet Baby Chico kept sinking and even tried to throw Mike (the paddler using him) out of the boat when we hit the calmer lake water. We ended up having to do some significant repairs, and the bottom of Chico is now a mishmash of plastic-welded colors. According to Mike, "it's a pain in the @#$ to roll, sinks, covered in patches, tried to drown me..." So we called it Poor Baby Chico. But I once called it "Sweet Baby" instead of "Poor Baby," and "Sweet Baby Chico" is what stuck.

Demon Splat is a green XP9. Originally, we named it Green Apple Splatter: "Green Apple" for the color and "Splatter" because of what happens if you eat too many apples... But, being a demo boat, the word "Demo" was already marked on the side, and Gregg pointed out that the boat was named Demo (he pronounced it "dee-moe"). So Mike grabbed a Sharpie and added an "N" after the word "Demo," then added "Splat" as homage to Green Apple Splatter's original name, thus changing the boat's name to Demon Splat.

Coming up later: Explanations for Thwomp, Bruiser, Garuk, BOB, Riffraff (name pending approval), Nightshade, Soggy Smurf, and more. Feel free to share in the comments any fun names you've had for boats (or cars or other meaningful objects) and how those names came to be.