Jenna Marie

Ted Jordan has always been a lover of cabin cruisers. He purchased his first, a 23-foot Penn Yan, 20 years ago with money inherited from his grandmother, Callie Jordan, whom everyone called Callie Bea.
       Right away, the grandson had “Callie Bea” boldly lettered on the transom.
       “That fit the source of the money to buy the boat and the old mariner’s tale that says the best boats get named for females,” said Jordan, a commercial and residential realtor in Forest who spends weekends at Smith Mountain Lake.
       As with most cruiser lovers, size mattered, and over time Jordan began size-creeping through a series of larger and larger craft. He named them all Jenna Marie after his daughter, now a 25-year-old law school grad living in New York. Little did Jordan know that his family naming tradition one day would meet with a strange coincidence.
       The fourth Jenna Marie (fifth if you count the daughter) was a 1989 Sea Ray 390, which was spending the vicious winter of 2010 at Crystal Shores Marina when February snow accumulation caused the roof over the slip to collapse. The boat was a total loss, but that was little more than a whitecap on the water for Jordan, who promptly took the insurance payout and went boat shopping. 
       “A chance to trade up,” he said with a grin. 
       Jordan’s online search turned up a nicely equipped 2001 Sea Ray 410 Express with 430 fresh-water-only hours on the twin 8.1-liter fuel-injected gas engines. The particulars sounded good enough to merit a first-hand look.
       Jordan found the boat snug and awaiting spring in a heated dry-storage warehouse at Port Clinton, Ohio, “looking especially big perched there on blocks, out of the water,” he said.
       “I liked her looks from the start. Then I walked around to the stern and glanced up to see Jenna Maria lettered on her transom. I knew then and there this was my next boat.”
    It took $3,500 to get the boat prepped for a road trip, loaded on a tractor-trailer and delivered to Smith Mountain Lake, where it now floats majestically in a covered slip at Crystal Shores.
      “She’s well outfitted for ease of operation and comfort,” Jordan said. “I enjoy weekending aboard right here in the marina and motoring to raft-ups with similar boats near the dam and State Park. We grill out, swim, ride jet skis and tell the same stories weekend after weekend. It’s great.”
    This time, however, Jordan has violated a boat-naming superstition — the one about new owners keeping a boat’s old name. Jenna Maria has become Jenna Marie.
       “I figured that, in this case, the boating gods would let me get by with changing one letter,” Jordan said.
       A few weeks ago, daughter Jenna Marie Jordan was at the lake for a decompression visit after studying for — and passing — the New York bar exam.
    “It’s wonderful to watch Dad enjoying his new boat so much,” she said. “I hope to be back at SML soon to celebrate landing my first job with a New York law firm.”

If you have or know of someone at SML with an interesting boat name story, we want to hear about it. Email the details to editor@smithmountainlaker.com.