Seafaring 101: What's in a Name; Do's and Don'ts

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 21, 2000 | by Stephen Goode

What to name your boat? For the people received some suggestions from Boating magazine, which recently announced the winners of its seventh annual boat-naming contest. "Meals on Reels," was one winner; "MoorOnz" and "Just Add Money" were two others. But this column's clear favorites were "Moby Debt," owned by Scott Campbell of Richardson, Texas, and "Eat, Drink & Remarry," belonging to Sally and Bob Ogg of New Port Richey, Fla.

A second press release from Boating listed a few "seafaring superstitions" of which boat owners or potential boat owners might want to be aware and that might amuse the rest of us who might never have the time and/or the dough to afford a boat:

* Need a cure for whooping cough? Place a live flounder on a victim's bare chest. The patient's cured as the fish dies. Another treatment is to put a trout's head in the patient's mouth.

* Say your prayers if you find a sewing pin aboard -- it can cause your hull to leak, your lines to break or your nets to rip open. And make sure you don't drop a bucket or mop overboard. Boating says that's a very, very unlucky act.

* Words that should never be spoken while at sea include: egg, knife, minister and church. Never, ever have a clergyman aboard your boat. In fact, you'll court certain disaster if he even stands next to it.

* Don't cut your fingernails or hair while under way. A deadly storm surely will follow. Also, if you cut your hair during a rising tide, you'll catch a cold.

* If a blue vein runs across the bridge of your nose, you may drown, unless you were born on a Sunday, in which case you're in the clear.

* if you spot a dolphin swimming north, you'll have fair weather. But if you see one swimming south, batten down the hatches: The weather's going to be bad.

* Mariners believe it's bad luck to change the name of a boat or to end its name with the letter "a" (such as that fatal "a" in Lusitania, the passenger vessel sunk by the Germans in 1916, which helped precipitate the United States' entry into World War II.