“If you’re wise, you won’t scoff outright at old maritime superstitions.
The sea has not yet unfolded all its mysteries.”
John Vigor

Maritime superstitions are as old as boats themselves. Humans can’t control the power of the sea so they try to appease the gods or God Himself. In ancient days, the blood of bulls was applied to the bow as a sacrifice (we now spray champagne instead). No bananas on board, no whistling, and no women (unless they’re naked!) And a voyage never commences on a Friday in honor of Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified.

While some of this sounded a bit silly to us, we were soundly chastised for our scoffing.

It’s been a tough couple weeks. The image that came to my mind was that N’Joy was acting like a green broke horse who refused to go into her stall. No matter what Craig tried, he couldn’t successfully maneuver her into the slip. Several times her bow (the front) wouldn’t turn in so we found ourselves sliding down the fairway between the docks sideways. If we did manage to get the bow in, we couldn’t get her close enough to the dock so I could jump off and secure her lines. In several instances, we were perilously close to hitting other boats or the dock and required the gracious assistance of our fellow boaters to get her tied down.

For poor Craig, a lifetime sailor, it was utterly humiliating. Observers would never have guessed we had lived on a boat for two years and successfully docked Joy Girl in all kinds of weather. Last week Craig said, out of utter frustration, that we’d have to sell the boat if we couldn’t figure out how to get her into a slip!

At that point, I started praying. Probably should have prayed before that, but we rely on our own abilities too often, don’t we? Anyway, a few moments later, Craig looked at me and said, “We haven’t completely changed the name of the boat! The old name is still on the boat. We need to get the name Latitude off. Off absolutely everything!”

We had disregarded a nautical superstition, tradition, law, whatever it is that we don’t fully understand yet: If you must change the name of your boat, you must remove all traces of the old name or you are inviting trouble aboard your vessel. Besides our slip issues, our hired captain who sailed her over from Illinois ran into nasty weather that doubled his trip time.

So we dug through paperwork and threw away anything with Latitude written on it, even a cool Jeanneau key chain. We wrote Latitude on a small piece of metal and threw it into the lake, asking for the book of that boat to be closed. Then we took the extra step of rechristening N’Joy with champagne on her bow, plus on her new name on the stern.

Guess what? Voila! It worked. Ever since, she has calmly slid into her slip, obeying her Captain’s command without complaint. She has floated up to the pier so I could jump down and set her lines. Like a broke horse, she obeyed and trusted her master. This has happened to Craig three times on three different boats (including Joy Girl), so we’ll follow this tradition without complaint from now on. Do we understand it? No. But no more thumbing our noses at the mysteries of the sea.

Although we had trouble docking, we did have fun shopping and decorating the cabin so she feels homey:

Since cats are considered good luck, we will escort Agent Mulder to the boat soon. With his laid-back, curious nature, we think he will enjoy N’Joy. Admiral Roswell, after completing the Great Loop, retired and vowed to never go to sea again.

And we did have an excellent sailing day with our friends Michelle and Berry! We hope for more soon!