And the winner is...

Säntis in the evening light © Stefan Somogyi - Photography**

Frankly, we have been surprised and overwhelmed with the response we got when we asked our readers to help find a name for our new dinghy: We got estimated 100 Facebook responses, several comments on the blog and even some mails. After all it was a lot of fun to read all our dear followers response! Thank you very much!

After some comments I felt at one point the need to justify my dink decision. But what the hell? I learned a long time ago that the cheapest buy you can make is if you buy the best what you can afford. Since I'm not a "real dinghy specialist" that's what I did and I enjoy it every day. 

There have been several names I loved, "Mastercard" our flexible friend, "Bernie Madoff" always taking you for a ride or "Fatty Tuna" to name a few. My favorite (thanks Nigel) was "Graf Spee" just because it sounds sooo big. I learned later this was the name of a German warship in WWIl. First, it was very successful by sinking commercial boats (without any casualties until this point). Still, there would be a few drawbacks: I'm a pacifist and against all kinds of war, it would be ridiculously stupid to name a boat after a warship. Second, the captain of the Graf Spee decided, since he thought (wrongly) that there is no chance of survival of the next battle, to scuttle the ship himself. He even commit suicide later. Guess it would be a bad thing to name any kind of boat like that... 

A Dutch friend gave us the idea of using some typical Swiss names like "Raclette" or so. Since Habibi is Arabic we liked the idea to pay homage to our Swiss roots aswell with a corresponding name. At least for the dink. So we decided to call it....Säntis.... 

Säntis may not be that funny, but it's "our" mountain, right in front of our hometown St.Gallen. At  2'503 meters above sea level, Säntis is the tallest mountain in the Alpstein massif of northeastern Switzerland. The mountain is not just a highly visible landmark, the panorama from the summit is spectacular: Six countries can be seen if the weather allows: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein, France and Italy. That fits somehow cool for world travellers, right?

Since we will not paint the name on the dink, nor will it show in any document the difficult spelling is of no concern. And as the idea of using a Swiss name came from Vincent we're glad to announce that he just won a 10 days cruise in the Caribbean on Habibi*! There will be no name giving ceremony until the name provider is actually able to participate. And I'm locking forward to see how he tries to crack a bottle of Champagne on the rubber tubes.... 

So if you'll hear in the near future a dinghy with a funny Swiss name calling the mothership over the radio with an even more weird Arabic name - watch out, we may be close....

  *Flights, Drinks and Marina Fees not included :-))

** picture credit by Stefan Somogyi - Photography - All rights reserved 
     Please check out his website here: http://www.stefan-somogyi.com/gallerie.php
     Stefan is an amazing landscape and macro photographer. His specialty is to capture 
     atmospheric pictures from the lake of constance region - that's where Marco had his
     first sailing boat and we both grew up.