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Modern day yachting superstitions.

We are all of us to some extent crippled by superstition, we have all done it, do not walk under a ladder, a black cat is unlucky ( sometimes lucky) but did you know most of the superstitions handed down to us are from the old sea farers of yesterday.

Today they are carried on by the yachting fraternity, but still a lot of them are used by us landlubbers.

* Many of the old skippers of years gone by would not have any plants aboard of their ships, their argument was plants need their roots in good old mother earth. So maybe it was a good idea not to temp the wrath of Davy Jones, after all you would not want to end up down there is his locker now would you. Yachting crews have not changed over the years they still believe it is bad luck.

* Whistle up the wind, a definite no even our yachting friends will not abide anyone whistling aboard, even with all of their modern technology. So an old mariner on a sailing ship would have been well chastised if he was caught whistling, you did not want to tempt the fates and whistle a storm up.

* Women aboard ships now this is a bit of a strange one, some sailors believed it was unlucky to have a woman aboard. Yet they would complain if the figurehead was not a naked lady with her eyes wide open ( a naked figurehead calmed the seas, and her open eyes would guide them to safety). Did you know that a lot of successful pirates where women, and what of nowadays how many ladies are champions in the sport of yachting, and no I am not inferring that these ladies are pirates, although I suppose some of them could have come from pirate descent, sorry ladies only kidding.

* Strangely it is believed by the yachting world that to keep a black cat aboard ship is lucky, unlike us ashore who have considered them to be unlucky for hundreds of years. Could it be we associate black cats with witchcraft, obviously an old sailing ship would not have had a local witch aboard of her.

* A pod of dolphins swimming around a ship is good luck, but a lone shark following was a sign of a death.

* It was unlucky to call a rat, err a rat it was known then and still is as a long tail. This is probably down to the fact, rats leaving a sinking ship, in my hometown Hull well known for the whaling and fishing fleets we once had, people still refer to rats as long tails.

* Of course the albatross is still revered among sailors the world over, because it is believed the souls of dead seamen are carried by them. Heaven help anyone who kills one of these birds, now seagulls are a different matter, I suppose they would have made a pleasant change to an old sea farers diet.

* You may or may not have heard about this superstition but sailing on a Friday is without doubt bad luck, because Jesus was crucified on a Friday. I do not know if this is true but the British navy thought that some sailors used this superstition to keep them ashore for another day. So they deliberately laid the keel for a warship on a Friday, launched her on a Friday and even called her Friday, guess what she was never seen again, I bet the crew did not go aboard voluntarily.

As you can see there are still many sailing superstitions passed down to our modern sea faring and yachting crews, but fingers crossed it is all rubbish, ( my toes are crossed as well, but I keep falling over).

Learn more about this author, Chris Emmerson.
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