Written by Jon:

Itchy Foot is a strange name for a boat I admit. The idea came when reading the Julia Donaldson book ‘The Snail and the Whale’ to Teo (short for Theodore) our 4 year old son. If you haven’t been lucky enough to read this book the TLDR is about a snail, with an itchy foot, who wants to sail around the world. To achieve this goal he hitches a ride on the tail of a whale and together they travel the world.

It’s a regular favourite at bedtime, though honestly I think we enjoy reading it to Teo more than he enjoys hearing it. One such evening, as I was reading it out loud, Mia mentioned that ‘Itchy Foot’ was a good name for boat and seed was planted.

Ever since I started sailing 15 years ago I day dreamed about the idea of owning a boat I’d always assumed that I would name her ‘workavoidance’  – I term which came to use during lazy days at University which led to me registering the domain name workavoidance.com in the early days of the internet. But when the time came for us to choose a name for the Small Ships Register shortly after completing the sale of our boat I realised that she needed to have a name which reflected her role as a home for our whole family, 4 year old and all.

So Itchy Foot seemed like the right choice for us. Unfortunately the fact that it is close to ‘itchy feet’ a synonym for wanderlust isn’t well known to non-native english speakers so I guess we’ll just have to live with the obvious question about foot fungus!