Our Albin Vega was the first ‘Glatisant’. This story was published in the Dutch magazine for Vega-sailors.
One might recognize the problem; once one bought a boat, one realizes that it should have a name too. From time to time I'm quite
a romantic - this might be the main reason for buying the boat - so names like Modaki (mom, dad and the kids), Second Love or
Wet Dream were out of the question, just like the old name 'Solar'.
I searched for a name with a link to old legends and sagas, or to mythology. An example of such a beautiful name is 'Sounion',
named after the cape with a temple dedicated to Neptune. But the first Dutchman who circumnavigated the world single-handed,
Herman Jansen, already used this name for his boat, and I didn't want to plagiarize. This also meant that about all the names
from 'the Lord of the Rings' were dropped. Finally, I judged it a dangerous form of tempting fate to name your ship after Greek
or Roman gods. Those gods might value their name on my 8.25 metres of plastic rather blasphemous. Though they are heathen gods,
you never know how much you might need them.
Luckily for me (and Albin Vega 2165), my First Love was in possession of the book 'Arthur'. In there, the story is told of
King Pellinore and his quest to chase the Beast Glatisant, also known as the Questing Beast. "This Beast has the head of a snake,
the body of a leopard, the flanks of a lion and the legs of a deer. Everywhere this Beast goes, one can hear a sound from its belly
like the sound of thirty hunting dogs. But not whenever it is drinking, of course."
King Pellinore, with his assignment to chase the Beast, is tired of hunting. Wandering through the woods for months, his sight
hampered by his visor, sleeping on the ground from which the damp rises that causes his suit of armour to rust... He dreams of a
feather bed in a castle. At night at the fire place, telling tales with a good glass of something, and the horse quietly grazing
in the fields.
One day, he gets an invitation, and he instantly forgets about his quest.
However, the happy life in the castle gets spoiled during a pig hunt. By accident, Pellinore finds the Questing Beast in miserable
conditions, "pined away, without will to live". He immediately breaks with his luxury life, and takes up his old quest to chase the
Questing Beast. The Beast gets a head start of two hours, and spectators from the castle see that Pellinore doesn't get a clue from
the tracks that the Beast just a little before tangled up with much pleasure.
And that is where the tale of Pellinore and the Beast Glatisant touches the essence of a boat: put in a lot of energy, in order
to chase something you'll never catch (the horizon, freedom, fill in for yourself). The biggest part of the fun is in the activity itself,
not in reaching something.
So that's why the name is 'Glatisant'.