Clever Boat Names

“Liquid Pleasure”

Bruce Dowdy

            Sometimes boat names just seem to happen serendipitously, and when they do, the owner simply knows it’s right.

            That was the case with Bruce Dowdy’s Sea Ray Pachanga, a 27-foot sport day cruiser powered with twin 454 Mercuriser outdrives he purchased from Smith Mountain Yacht Club in 1990. As the only Pachanga 27 Sea Ray blessed with big-block engines, the boat is a rarity that Dowdy likens to “having a ’65 Corvette convertible.”

            Unnamed when he bought it, the boat was left that way for a while. During an outing with niece Mary Elizabeth Hall and her husband, Brian, Dowdy mentioned the vessel needed a name.

            “Liquid Pleasure,” Mary Elizabeth Hall suggested. Dowdy liked it and later made the moniker official. Boating Magazine liked the name, too, picturing Dowdy’s Pachanga in a feature on boat names.

            Originally from Salem, Dowdy enjoyed exploring SML as a weekender beginning in the mid-1970s with a smaller boat kept at Smith Mountain Yacht Club. He moved to Winding Waters in 1990 and upgraded to the Sea Ray, which is now kept in the boathouse outside his current home in Isle of Pines, near marker R22.

            Dowdy, a co-founder of the SML Boating Association, said he enjoys running “Liquid Pleasure” to on-water restaurants and for trips to revel in the beauty of lake sunsets. It occasionally whisks him to work at Bernard’s Realty, but more often he makes that trip in his Carolina Skiff center-console fishing boat.

            “Going by water, I avoid the wicked morning traffic jams on Scruggs Road,” he said facetiously.

“Bottom Chaser”

John and Rhoda Schoepf

            Glimpse the name “Bottom Chaser” on the stern of a cabin cruiser and several possibilities come to mind. That the boat belongs to a serious scuba diver may not be the first thought, especially when martini glass graphics also decorate the transom. However, if you look closely, you’ll see the image of a diver painted there, too.

            John and Rhoda Schoepf keep their 1988 32-foot Chris Craft Amerosport berthed lakeside of their Moneta home, just above Hales Ford Bridge. The boat had been brought to SML after a few years plying Long Island Sound but was sitting unused and “seriously neglected,” Rhoda said, at Smith Mountain Yacht Club, where she used to work.

            “I noticed the boat, called John, and the next thing you know we were buying it,” she recalled. “It reminded us of good times we had had with friends on their 32-foot wooden Chris Craft.”

            John Schoepf earned his advanced diving certifications in Roanoke in the late 70s and has dived at SML as well as in North Carolina, Florida and Bimini in the Bahamas. His passion for scuba extended into the big boat ownership period and influenced the name painted on the stern of the Chris Craft.

            Seldom used for diving any more, “Bottom Chaser” is an ideal boat for “cruising around the lake, taking in the great scenery,” Rhoda Schoepf said. “We might do the Intracoastal Waterway when we retire.”

            The couple also owns a 1983 Glastron bowrider outboard, which they’ve refurbished and keep on a trailer. So far, it’s only been used on SML, but the Schoepfs said they hope to take it to explore other lakes in the future. Meanwhile, it stays fit pulling skiers and tubers when family and friends come to visit.