Champers? to launch a Smack?

Victorious

Victorious

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I launch Victorious soon...very soon.
Thoughts turn to a bottle to crack.
Champers is the first thought.... I don’t much like the stuff... but tradition seems at first glance to demand it.

But would she have seen such ceremony 100 years ago? What was "traditional" in A victorian fishing community?


Perhaps I should mark the occasion with little more than a brief cheer and a tea break?

Perhaps I should honour such an occasion with a bottle of something I would LIKE to drink myself? (It seems a tad "token gesture" to sacrifice Champers that I don’t like much)
To see a whole bottle of Southern Comfort dissipate into Chichester harbour would emotionally HURT /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif



Ok, I realise I am nuts.... but this will be a one off event for me... It deserves a little thought.

Russell
 
I don't think Neptune will care much if it's Champers or Newcastle Brown, as long as the thought is there, and he gets his libation. Choose something you genuinely enjoy, and maybe is a bit of an extravagance that you don't drink usually, and get on with it, and enjoy, just pausing to give Neptune his just rewards (a few glugs from the bottle should do it, maybe poured via the bows into the water) and a little thought for the time you spend on his waters, then drink the rest of it yourself
 
be careful - champagne bottles are quite strong and using std bottles could cause damage. Against a boat i wd try scoring it with a glass cutter first.

I also claim the PBO nerd of the week prize : cost of job £0.
 
I agree that the original launching and naming ceremony would perhaps not have used champagne. As Hervey Benham once said to me, criticising a model smack that I had made, "These were poor men's boats, built very simply, without expensive fittings"(my model had more galvanised iron about it than the original would have had when new). But there would certainly have been a ceremony of some sort, probably involving a keg of beer for the workforce (that might have some appeal, as an idea?). We see the same think in Japan, now, where a ship launching is always an occasion for a keg of sake, never mind the strange alien custom of wasting perfectly good champagne!

There is certainly a possibility that the owner might have been a Teetotaller, as many Victorian fishermen were, which case a cup of tea would perhaps have been offered instead.

But I would go for a barrel of good beer, and pour some over the bow.
 
And why not go for something appropriate? Like:
http://www.foxbrewery.co.uk/ (No personal experience, so I don't actually know what any of their beers are like.)

Or maybe Excelsior from Uncle Stuart's Brewery is a golden well hoped ale, at 4.5% abv.
"This ale takes is name from the fishing smack built in 1921."
Again, I don't know the beer myself.

A mixed crate or three might fit the bill for the party, with a bottle for the boat?
 
If you are breaking a bottle of whatever over the bows, you should do the following.

Decant the original contents into a suiitable drinkable container. Then enjoy it.

As has been already been said score the original bottle well with a glass cutter.

Refill the bottle with a similar coloured liquid to the original.
ie lemanade, tea or whatever.

Put the bottle inside one leg of a pair of tights (remove the original user) and draw the tights taught.

That way, the liquid is not wasted, The bottle will break, The glass will be contained in the tights. The tights will not be seen.

Cheers

Iain
 
I love the suggestions about theme-related beers. Broken glass anywhere?? No No N0! Open a bottle of beer or champagne, shake and spray, consume the rest. Dispose of bottle responsibly.

And for the young at heart, I saw a doco about launching a traditional boat in a traditional way in america, the children were allowed to throw fresh eggs at it!!

What fun!! Enjoy the launch and all your time on the water.

cheers Bob
 
It's a wonderful thing to launch a boat. I doubt that I'll forget the feeling of launching Zuline as long as I live.

We did a bit of research on this and came up with consistent references to English workboats having been christened with a glass of red wine. So that's what we did: opened the bottle and poured a glass, poured a bucket of seawater over the stem to prevent stains on the teak deck and then poured the glass of red over her. Then a little later we sat around a table on the jetty and as a family shared the balance of the bottle from some nice wine glasses. The best of both worlds.

Enjoy your day.

Mike
 
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