What Happened to the Wind?

[Seachelle]

I have a question to ask related to the naming of boats. I am looking at buying a pre-loved boat right now (details to follow if things work out). The name of the boat came up, in my conversation with the seller, as it was interesting to my father (my father is 'The Old Salt' in my storytelling on my sailing blog) when I had shown my father pics of the boat. Specifically, my father wondered why the boat was named as it was - btw, the name of the boat is Normandy. I won't go into the details as to why the seller chose the name, but the seller told me that he renamed (christened) the boat the 'right way' (with a special ceremony) so that there wouldn't be any bad luck. I have heard of the breaking of the champagne bottle over the bow of the boat to name a boat, but I thought that was only done on brand-new boats. It sounded like this is the type of ceremony that the seller did when he renamed the boat to his chosen name. Would love to learn more about this tradition of renaming boats - and what is done in doing so. 

[crazycarl]

A bottle of Champagne was broke over the bow of the Titanic also.

[Renae]

http://www.go-embedded.com/Sailingmanual.pdf

Last chapter deals with this specifically.