The Boat Name Is

​Thanks for all your suggestions to help name our boat. It gave us a great source of amusement with some of the suggestions.

We are on our third attempt to secure a boat to buy. The other two were being held back as some of the owners didn't want to sell and were having a power struggle between them.

Boaty McBoatface started to build up momentum in the early stages, but thank God there were a lot of you out there that saved the day and started sending in other sensible suggestions.

There were many of you who sent in more than one suggestion, which is fine by us.

Some funny ones but still quite apt were "Dive now in a Minute" that was sent in a few times, once by our very own H. "Free Abuse" was another apt one, but as I say, we never put anything with FREE written down in writing. It could get misconstrued!!!! Another popular one was "STUNNING" which many of you know is Mr Alun's catch phrase. "NEWTRIANTS" which is a reference to Alec's awesome briefings was also brandished about. The one that was always going to be a non starter was sent in by Danny Calvert. I can only assume he was having a laugh as "St George" isn't welcome in these parts since the Crusades although there already a boat named that in Travco Marina.

Callum-Valentino Rossi suggested we call the boat "The Big G". The only other person to back him up was G himself. Sorry lads!

There were also some very nice suggestions that were in the Welsh Launguage, Swn Y Mor (Sound of the sea), Seren Sinai (Sinai Star) Cariad (my love) Y DDraig Goch (The Red Dragon), Calon Lan (Pure of Heart) and many more.

Also you romantics out there pushed this one almost to the top. "Moyra Lee" but it's bad luck to re-name a boat with a ladies name. 
Mr Alun said. "It would be OK in this case, as she's no lady, she's my wife" which got him a thump from the Boss!

One that we had a few suggestions for would be a task to write on the boat, even though Mr Richard Jones suggested writing the name from the Starboard side around to the Port side. LLanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch!!!!!! Thanks Nikki and a few others!

In the end, there were two most popular names/words. We are very pleased with the both. There are two words which kept cropping up. One being Dragon accompanied before or after by another word like Red, Welsh, Diver, Sharm (Mr Alun's favorite Mary Jones) even Sakara!!! The other being Elite accompanied by others such as Dragon, Red Sea, Sharm, Explorer, Shearwater, and many more.

In the end we chose the word that appeared all on it's own the most. So the name of our new boat is
plain and simple, one word just like Lido was, and I'm sure it won't come as much of a surprise. 

​The name of our boat is....

"elite"

The next one will be elite 1!!!

Introducing Captain Yahia. He has in excess of 35 year of experience working and captaining boats in Sharm El Sheikih and Port of Suez. Yahia was the captain of New Age and worked with Alun for years at Ocean College where he was Alun's favorite captain, and again with us at elite when we hired New Age to work with us. Yahia was Alun's first choice for captain and was over the moon when he accepted the position of captaining "elite" and work with Red Sea elite diving on the first time of asking.

Captain Yahia was given a free hand to choose his chef. He didn't hesitate to suggest Machmood and said "I have a very good one that I want for our team". Having eaten on the boat several times, Captain Yahia certainly made the right choice.

​Plenty of upper deck space.

The Lounge has been named "The Lyn and Linda lounge" in honour of Alun's mother and father who donated the funds to be able to buy the boat.

The third member of the crew needs no introduction for our elite diving regulars. He again was hand picked, but is also the most popular with the majority of elite divers after working with us for 5 years while a member of the LIDO crew. Yes Zenger is now on our team.

All of us at elite diving in Sharm, look forward to welcoming you onto our new acquisition.