Do you have any sailing superstitions you follow?

[rmlarson1098]

Originally Posted by Nostrodamus

Sailors through the years have been a superstitious lot.

We have heard about not sailing on Fridays, not whistling on board or having bananas on your boat but is there any superstitions you adhere to?

Is there any superstitions you have broken and something bad happened?

For a few more unusual ones and their origins follow the link.

https://www.cygnus3.com/sailing-supe...their-origins/

We don't like to be too snotty when it comes to naming our boat - no 'S/V Wave Crusher' or 'SeaBuster'. We KNOW who's the boss, and it ain't us. Musn't honk off Mother Ocean or King Neptune. Likewise, making all sorts of big plans at your next landfall seems a little arrogant to us. We recall the old (Yiddish?) quip: "Know how to make God laugh? Tell him your future plans." The same goes double when dealing with Neptune.

[Don C L]

I try to think I am not superstitious but I did feel very guilty when I got so caught up in stepping the mast that I forgot the coin under it.. and I had a good one too that my son had won as an award and he wanted to donate! I put it under the new support arch, but it wouldn't stay in. Looks like I will be rebuilding that thing anyway so I'll get my second chance.
I was told by an old salt you can rename after you have grounded her. So I ran my old boat hard aground and changed the name from "Magic Twanger" to "Egret." Then my friend kept swimming over and sticking an electrical tape "r" in front of it!
My current boat will keep her name. It was personally meaningful to the first owner's wife and it's been on there 55 years, so it'll stay.

[ingrid75]

I am not joking here, I feel these"rules" have come down to us through the centuries (or longer) for a reason. I admit that I am an old fart, and am sailing a 19th century boat, but I have been cruising full time since 1995 and these precautions have seemed to work, so i feel no need to "test" them.
That said:
We don't sail, or even check out, on a Friday. (Don't want a Friday date on our clearance papers)
We don't whistle on board.
We don't turn hatch I covers upside down.
We don't open a can from the bottom.
We don't use blue or green paint.
We don't allow walnuts, umbrellas, or Bibles aboard.
We don't cut nails or hair at sea.
We don't say we are sailing "to" a destination. We say we are sailing "toward" it.
And finally, when things are going well, we don't talk about it.
It is not that we are superstitious, we just don't do these things.

[Akapeterc]

No bananas on my boat but I must've left heaps of times on Friday, I love to eat bananas so I'm going to try and sneak some on board just to see what happens

[tstano]

I guess we've broken every superstition mentioned and a few more. I'm considering the bare breasted women but at my age there could be problems. The only one I have problems with is the belief that the ICW bridges have 65 feet air draft at high tide. Maybe the thought "Now its fixed" or "I've given up drinking". How about the dinghy should be behind the boat? Not superstitious, just smart.


All U Get

[Delancey]

I'm not particularly superstitious. That said, went out for a day sail once on a friend's boat. This other guy shows up with some bananas and is all like "tee hee, I brought bananas!"

I guess I was home sick as a kid and missed that day of sailing school because I had never heard the bit about bananas before.

Anyhell, to make a long story short, we get to where we are going, drop the hook, the girls start sun bathing, I'm sitting on the stern pulpit getting started with a beer and watch as this guy's toes slip as he's going down the companionway....

...if you've never witnessed someone receive a compound fracture of their nose by catching it on the edge of the bridge deck while they are falling down below, take it from me, it pretty gruesome. Cartilage shoved up tearing the skin across the bridge of the nose, blood everywhere. What a mess!

I can still see it in my mind's eye like it was in slow mo.

Got him squared away and we up-anchored headed towards a hospital. One thing I will mention, in this type of situation, it does good to get the victim cleaned up to help them feel a little better about themselves.

This guy had blood all over himself. Once I got the bleeding stopped I thoroughly washed him and him clothes so he didn't have to go into the hospital looking like a slasher victim.

In the end hee was all right. I ran into him on the street a year or so later. He seemed self-conscious but I didn't think he looked so bad. Wonder if now he is superstitious about bananas onboard....

We have bananas onboard, wife and I eat one for breakfast just about every day.

[Elie]

French have a huge superstition: Rabbits(Lapin in french). You don't pronounce this word onboard, and if you have to, you refere to it as the long eared animal, or the cousin of the hare, ect...
I stick very much to this and I strongly believe it is true. My 3 year old grand daughter came with her parents for a sailing vacation on board our boat, in the Virgin Islands. She had a big white bunny toy, and worst, a pyjama with long ears, like a rabbit. Horror!. Everybody laughed at my wories of the damn animal..
And the bad omen became very true, for her mother, responsable for this breach of boat etiquette. She walked on fire corail in the famous jacuzzies of Culebrita Island, and in her hast to get out of the jaccuzzi, walked on and urchin... then, the next day she was lashed by a man-of-war medusa invisible tentacles and had to be admitted to hospital, in shock!. My smart grand daughter ditched overbord the terrible bunny(basic instinct for a 3 year old smart lady, or pure luck?). I refused to turn around to play MOB or more precisely, rabbit overboard and everything came back to normal: return from hospital all effect of her encounter with medusa gone as per magic, and no more problem with sea creatures!... So I believe strongly that this superstition is based on solid evidence . And I stick to it!

[sheldon957]

I will do my utmost to always follow this one on my boat, seeing that I am a stickler for tradition!

" In the event of a storm, a bare breasted woman on deck will calm the seas. This is why the figureheads on most sailing ships are bare breasted."


Honey, I see a cloud on the horizon, better reef that top down early!

[lifemiles]

had a good chuckle reading all this.

I've heard from an old sailor on Bermuda the ships name could be changed at midnight on a full moon night while a virgin pees in the bilge

never actually tried that. hard to find virgins these days. :-)

[Darrieus13]

Long time ago I stupidly used to spend a lot of time in an office instead of sailing. Sailing was only possible during the week end so we raced in the bay . In our class (half ton), there was an absolutely unbeatable ship and we were out of idea about how to improve our racing.Then as a matter of joke one crew said I 'll drop a rabbit in his cockpit. So did it with a stuffed rabbit.
Believe it or not, next Friday the skipper sailed singlehanded to the next regatta harbor, fell overboard and was drowned.
We were all chocked about it and I must admit that any form of rabbit is banned from Cochise. Even the word. Perhaps is it also kind of tradition to be maintained*? As for friday leave superstition, could it survive theTGIF civilization? I don't know but I prefer to respect a silly tradition than add a new useless risk...

[nautical62]

I never cross the Gulf Stream with north winds predicted to exceed 12 knots.

[hamburking]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

Could make for some long dinghy rides.

The dinghy was always ready, fully inflated and topped up with fuel. However, the port was always closed, by order of the harbourmaster...no docking allowed.

[thinwater]

I would have though superstition and all belief would have withered with the advent of science, but alas, it has not.

That said, my best trips have been on re-named boats, many started on Fridays, and lots involved women. Bad trips involve fixed schedules.

To me, the origins of these tales seem obvious:

• Re-named boat. This implies it is older. Maiden voyages have a bad record too, for obvious reasons.
• Fridays. Someone was in a hurry.
• Whistling for wind. Calm before the storm and all that.
• Women. Focused on the wrong things.
• Gingers. Well, maybe there is something to the fiery redhead thing (). My wife seems to bring good luck (except for fishing), but I have it on good authority that her red hair is fake (since she has me dye it).

[Kanook]

Entertaining subject.
As a young lad I used to be a shrimpboat fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico and learned quickly there were rules. Never start a trip on a Friday, no peanuts or black suitcases on board and no women in the wheelhouse. When I became a captain I vowed to ignore those "silly superstitions". The first Friday trip we snagged a net on a wreck (bottom trawler) and lost $10,000 worth of equipment. The second time I tried a Friday trip start we had no luck and caught very little over 20 days at sea. After that if I couldn't get away from the dock by 1159 on Thursday night, I didn't leave until Saturday and my luck improved considerably. The only superstition I seemed to get away with was women in the wheelhouse. Never a problem there.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by KP44

I never start a voyage on a Friday.
Port Captains, immigration offices, repair yards, etc, are either closed or overtime rates on weekends. If I return for any reason, I can spend the whole weekend in Quarantine, waiting for officials. The Friday thing was never a superstition but common sense.
It is different for weekend sailors in their home waters.

Friday is my usual departure to/from Aus. It gets us to Cairns when Border Farce etc are open on Monday or Tuesday (depending on morning or evening departure and vessel/weather)! Same for return journeys from Aus.

Horses for courses!