In the summer of 2017, while sailing with my family on a charter boat toward the breathtaking Aeolian Islands, Yuka and I found ourselves in the midst of a fun but challenging task: naming our future boat. We tossed around a few ideas, but none quite felt like the one.
Then inspiration struck—courtesy of my sister, Marina. When we asked her for suggestions, she didn’t even hesitate. “Oroboro!” she exclaimed.
The moment we heard it, we were hooked. The name resonated with us immediately.
Oroboro is more than just a name—it’s an ancient symbol of a serpent devouring its own tail, representing the eternal cycle of renewal and infinity. Plus, it’s a palindrome, reading the same backward and forward (just like “racecar” or “kayak”). For sailors, the idea of a continuous journey and renewal felt especially meaningful.
We loved it so much that Yuka jumped into action, sketching logo ideas on a scrap of yellow paper from a legal pad right there on the boat. It was a spark of creativity that brought the name and identity of our boat to life.
And that’s how “Oroboro” became not just the name of our boat but a symbol of the journeys, adventures, and endless possibilities it would carry us through. What started as a simple suggestion turned into the perfect representation of our sailing story.
The final logo is a mix of three elements: a wind rose, a serpent and a compass (with the head of the snake indicating north, and three little triangles at 90, 180 and 270 degrees.
It’s easy to spell out using the NATO phonetic alphabet (Oscar Romeo Oscar Bravo Oscar Romeo Oscar), easy to pronounce and very meaningful for us.
In Brazil we loved how they pronounce it over the VHF!
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