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Salty Myths and Secret Lore: Superstitions At Sea

SALTY MYTHS AND SECRET LORE… stories we’ve heard, and tales galore…

For ages, salty sailors have told stories of strange happenings out at sea. Though intrigued by the legends of those that have gone before us, the stories we tell here are first hand accounts and shared in detail by those directly involved.

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SUPERSTITIONS AT SEA:

After a quick consultation with Google I found at least a hundred different sayings, superstitions and lore of the sea. Many of these you have probably heard before, like “it’s bad luck to change the name of a boat.” Well, I think the precautions we took to avoid this one have worked out pretty well for us!

Most engrained into my memory is a saying my grandfather always told me when I was little. Whenever we would see a red sky at sunset the night before going boating in the San Juan Islands of the Pacific North West, he would tell me “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight! Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

Apparently the saying originated in England, where weather systems move from west to east. According to Wikipedia, weather systems typically move from west to east, and red clouds result when the sun shines on their undersides at either sunrise or sunset. At these two times of day, the sun’s light is passing at a very low angle through a great thickness of atmosphere commonly known as The Belt of Venus. The result of which is the scattering out of most of the shorter wavelengths — the greens, blues, and violets — of the visible spectrum, and so sunlight is heavy at the red end of the spectrum. If the morning skies are red, it is because clear skies to the east permit the sun to light the undersides of moisture-bearing clouds coming in from the west. Conversely, in order to see red clouds in the evening, sunlight must have a clear path from the west in order to illuminate moisture-bearing clouds moving off to the east.

BUT DID YOU KNOW THIS?

Because of different prevailing wind patterns around the globe, the traditional rhyme is generally not correct at lower latitudes of both hemispheres, where prevailing winds are from east to west. The rhyme is generally correct at mid-latitudes where, due to the rotation of the Earth, prevailing winds travel west to east.

Now that we live in the tropics, the prevailing winds are Easterly Trades, moving from east to west. Even though he hasn’t caught many waves this summer, Peter will always be a surfer at heart and prefers the version from surfline.com which has been adjusted for the tropics: “Red skies at dawn, surfers surf on. Red skies at evening, surfers start leaving.

OUR #1 FAVORITE SAILING SUPERSTITION:

Dolphins swimming with the ship are a sign of good luck!

We’ve seen so many dolphins in all of our travels. They have led us into and out of the majority of our anchorages and they have appeared on many of our passages.

My favorite dolphin encounter was before we even started our journey when we were living on the boat at Burnt Store Marina in Florida. We were taking a late night stroll with the dogs and noticed a bunch of splashing in the channel headed toward the North Basin docks. The moon wasn’t out and the darkness filled the sky. A bright bluish-green glow appeared at the water’s edge and swept back and forth and around and around in a sparkly pattern. It was absolutely MAGICAL! Unlike anything we have ever seen. The bioluminescence was being stirred up by a single dolphin feeding at night. It swam around near us for about 10 minutes as we watched the show, then slowly disappeared as the dolphin swam away. Even if we had one with us, our cameras never would have been able to capture what we saw. It was one of those moments you have to see with your own eyes. Ever since then, every dolphin we see has been extra special!

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What are your favorite superstitions at sea?

LOOK Insurance wants to uncover all the sailing superstitions they can find for a fun little project they are working on. Please click over to their survey HERE and tell them your #1 favorite sailing superstition, where you first heard about it, and what you do to stop bad luck when sailing.

If you have any salty myths or secret lore that you’d like to see published here, please contact us on the blog or through our FACEBOOK PAGE!

St. Lucia: Dolphins and the Pitons

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After Dominica, we sailed into St. Lucia’s Northwestern port of Rodney Bay to rest up. Our stay was relatively non-eventful.

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July 17th we set out for our last passage to Windward en route to Carriacou. A pod of playful dolphins swam out to wish us farewell.

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The Pitons on the Southern end of St. Lucia are a spectacular sight to see.

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Maybe next season we’ll stop to experience The Pitons up close and personal. Next stop… Carriacou!

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Even Gunner was excited. He snuck in a kiss for his daddy when he thought I wasn’t looking :)

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We are currently preparing to leave Grenada and head back North to spend the Winter in the Virgin Islands! Stay tuned for all the pictures from our adventures in Grenada and the Grenadines!

 

Nevis to Guadeloupe: Spinner Dolphins and Rainbows

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It was such a short hop over to Nevis once we left St. Kitts. The hillsides and black sand beaches were breathtaking at Pinney’s Beach.

We took the dinghy around the point for a little snorkeling near the rocky points. The water wasn’t very clear that day so we headed back toward where we were anchored and snorkeled off the beach near some scattered coral heads. Peter got a little too close and accidentally poked himself on an urchin. NO FUN!

Our diving adventures were cut short, but we still enjoyed the scenery.

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Unfortunately we left our credit card at Salt Plage back on St. Kitts so we had to turn back and get it the next day. The management was incredibly helpful and even bought us a drink for our inconveniences. It’s not so easy to just cancel a credit card and have a new one mailed out when we live on a boat with no mailing address. Oh well. It was an easy sail and it only set us back one day.

As we set out for Guadeloupe, a small pod of spinner dolphins came out to play as we passed by Nevis around dinnertime….

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We left St. Kitts at 5:45pm on July 7th. Our night passage started off terribly uncomfortable when we made the mistake of not getting far enough off shore. The shoals south of Nevis stirred up the sea in a violent way and had us considering turning around to wait for settled weather.  Our friends Dustin and Courtney were planning to leave Nevis not long after us and we later heard they took a wave on the flybridge of Captiva, a 75′ Catamaran, on that very same passage! We persevered, wearily arriving at Deshaies, Guadeloupe at 10:15 am just in time to see a beautiful rainbow above our sistership, Lunacy.

We were finally a good distance down the island chain!

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We’re currently in Grenada wrapping up Hurricane Season and preparing to sail back north to the Virgin Islands… stay tuned for more adventures!