I get interesting reactions to the name of my boat. Usually it's just curiosity, ..."Mabrouka. What does that mean?" My explanation that it's a feminine version of the Arabic greeting, mabruk, that is idiomatically interpreted as Blessed Lady usually elicits appreciation. It is, after all, a singularly nice appellation, with spiritual if not actually holy implications. So what's not nice about blessing a lady?

Here's something I hadn't thought of, though. Perhaps the name treads on spiritual sensitivities. I can imagine a devout Catholic assuming the boat was named after the Madonna. Would that be offensive? Help me out here. Let me know if I'm treading on the toes of God. I remember how my mother used to complain that it was sacrilegious that the one-time Giants outfielder Jesus Alou was named after the son of God. I guess I can see that but, and this reflects my religious intensity, "Oh well."

One occasional reaction I get is of concern that I might incite anti-Islamic extremists to take vengeance out on me or my boat. Really? Maybe it's just that I don't know any one that displays an inkling of such tendencies. Whether or not it's something that I should worry about, I don't.

The response that pleases me the most is when someone recognizes the word. Yes,believe it or not, there have been more than a couple of instances where someone actually understands the name. What's more, Mabrouka is written in Arabic script on the bow boards, too. When someone can read that, it's a very nice feeling, a pleasant connection. Although it took a couple of years, one such instance has resulted in a serendipitous reconnection. For that story, read my blog entry "An addition to my Inspiring Cruiser's list" of March 13th, 2013.


Counting the one above, I've offered the interpretation of Mabrouka a couple of times in this blog, but I haven't ever given the complete background. To make a long story even longer, my young family was just starting out, trying to make ends meet in Capital View Park, a Maryland suburb of Washington DC, with three girls all under the age of three. How we got into such an estrogen-intensive state of affairs is a story I won't expound upon here. Leave it to say that making ends meet while juggling babies meant Erika, my then wife, was forced to work the night shift with the typing pool for a large DC legal firm while my days were more traditionally filled pursuing my engineering career with the Department of the Navy. It's certainly a simplification brought on by the intervening years, but adult conversation in our lives seemed limited to hellos and goodbyes at the front door.

Our daughters have been the blessings of our lives, but the long and short of it is that the situation drove me and Erika to jump at the high salary offered by an employment opportunity in Saudi Arabia. The relative affluence of expatriate living promised many aspects of the family life of my own childhood: the financial freedom to provide generously for our children; a work schedule that included dad being home for lunch, evenings and weekends; and a mom that could stay home with her children. An unanticipated benefit was the close-knit expat community that, again, reflected the family-friendly environment of the neighborhoods of my youth.

Without doubt there were negative aspects of life in Saudi Arabia, but all tolled, my reflections on the 5-1/2 years spent with my family overseas are positive. So it was a happy circumstance when the boat search I conducted upon my repatriation to the US turned up a beautiful CT-41 with such a lovely Arabic name. Kismet, it seemed to me, had made a special connection.

Mabrouka's previous owners were a couple of professors from Cal State Long Beach, she Egyptian and he Lebanese. The Blessed Lady interpretation, as I remember being told, is a common one in Egypt. I reinforced this less that a year ago when my curiosity drove me to do a web search to seek out other Mabroukas. Yes, I found one belonging to a professor at another university in California (What's with professors, ...Californian professors?) and got in touch with him. He shared that Mabrouka is a common name for dhows that work the Arabian Gulf and Red Sea. Cool!

So, it is with appreciation of the positive aspects of living in Saudi Arabia and all the blessed ladies in my life, ...my daughters and their mother, my own mother, my sisters, my grand mother, my aunts and cousinettes, significant others, and female acquaintances young and old, ...that I recount the pedigree of my lovely sailing yacht's name.