Another big step yesterday, the sign writer came to apply the name and registered port to the transom. We’re really pleased with how its come out.

We found choosing the name disproportionately difficult, much worse than choosing the names for our children, we pondered it for nearly two years.

The difficulty arises from several factors, for a start there are an almost limitless number of names that are possible for a boat, real or invented. We wanted ours to be personal to us, it needed to sound nice and to look good when written. And of course, playing in the back of our minds, is the pressure from all those marinas and harbours we had walked around saying to each other “that’s a strange name” or “fancy calling your boat that”.

On top of all this once you find something you like, to have it registered, it has to be unique within the UK. Finally it has to pass the Google search test – one name we came up with turned out to be rather similar to scratch in Spanish and another as a valley in the Game of Thrones.

We spent ages playing around with combinations of Rick and Roz or Rachael and Matt. We scrolled through lists of Constellations, Greek and Roman Goddesses and even song lyrics. We tried words for sea, waves, wind etc. in different languages including harping back to my family roots and searching the Cornish dictionary.

But of course when it came to it we settled on one we had thought of right at the beginning.

Raya was Mathew’s pet name for his sister when as a toddler pronouncing Rachael was too much of a mouthful, it seemed to fit all the parameters and when searched on Google it turns out to be an Arabic girls name meaning – Friend To All.

Perfect.