Felicity

When I was a youngster, one of my boyhood heroes was a German World War I sailor named Felix Graf von Luckner who with his three-masted sailing ship called Seeadler destroyed a lot of tonnage without the loss of a single life. After the war he wrote three books about his exploits and went on a tour of speaking engagements around Europe and America. He was very popular in the USA, particularly New York. Because Graf Luckner was my hero, I always had wanted to name my first son Felix. However,..... when I told my wife about that, she said that in America that name is synonymous with a cat and she was not about to have a son by that name. So, years later we got a cat and I finally got to name someone Felix. Felix was all white, was very loving and a great little cat and we enjoyed his company for 17 years. So, when we came to naming our Catalina 36, I thought about a white cat and Felix came to mind. Of course, boats are females so we had to name her Felicity. The definition of felicity is bliss or happiness, all good things to describe sailing or a sailboat. But wait, there is more. The Washington Post has a contest where readers are asked to come up with new definitions of existing words. My definition of Felicity is "Happiness to get out of town". Or, if you say Felicity real fast, it could sound like "Flee the city". Helmut Kellermann Hull 2112