EP 49: Boating Superstitions!

Episode #49: Your Pocket Sailing Instructor Podcast Boating Superstitions!

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Life has been throwing me some curveballs lately so I started to wondering if I had somehow broken some sacred oath or fallen on bad luck. I just can’t seem to catch a break at the moment, which had me thinking about superstitions and where I may have gone wrong… should I have eaten that banana during that race? Did that black cat on the dock walk in front of me when I wasn’t paying attention? I started to whistle along to that song the other day… did that do it?!

Boating Superstitions

Bananas: yup. We have a superstition about bananas onboard a sailboat. Here are some of the reasons why bananas are believed to be bad luck on a boat. One involves the fact that they spoil quickly. Any ship carrying a cargo of bananas needed to deliver their and so the captain always had to get to his destination quickly to deliver his banana shipment and so

Put the right foot forward: historically, it was believed that the left side of the body was a bad omen, or associated with evil. Therefore, all sailors stepped onto the vessel with their right foot! If you forgot, and stepped on with your left foot, you’d be tossed overboard, or your shoes would be tossed overboard in an effort to please Poseidon 😉

Renaming a vessel: I’m going to do an entire episode on this one, but it has been long thought that renaming a vessel is bad luck! Stay tuned for my episode about what you need to say, when and how to make sure you don’t curse your boat!

No whistling: whistling at sea was a way to taunt Poseidon and Aeolus.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.

Boats are a she… often boats were named by their Captains after their wives or mistresses. It was believed that if the boat was named after a woman the Captain loved, she would bring them home safely.

These are just a few examples! Listen to the entire episode for more!