Preparing to sail Saturday, but really Friday

The Goddess Frigg

Perhaps surprising to the non-sailing community, sailors are a superstitious lot.  Or perhaps not.  But it is fair to say that there are many superstitions associated with sailing. 

For example, a sailor is never supposed to start a trip on a Friday.  That’s right. Out of the seven days of the week, it is said to be bad luck to start a sailing trip on the last day of what most people consider to be the work week.

I have no idea where the superstition originated.  After a cursory internet search, I found vague references to the superstition on a few sailing blogs and a mention in a Wikipedia entry on why Fridays are considered unlucky in some cultures.  I also found an unattributed comment on a blog that said the no-sail Fridays resulted from early Christians objecting to Norse mythology, more specifically their disdain for the observance of the Norse goddess named Frigg, the wife of Odin, the most powerful of the gods.  In stories before the birth of Jesus Christ, Frigg was considered the goddess of love and fertility, and Friday is a derivation of her name.   Before Jesus’ time, Friday was considered a lucky day to begin a sailing journey.  After Jesus’ time, Christians had so demonized Norse mythology and deemed Frigg a witch that Friday became the witch’s day, and thus, an unlucky day to set sail.   

That being said, we’re starting the trip tomorrow.  But with the superstition in mind, we are merely sailing coincidentally on our planned track tomorrow but won’t officially start the trip until after midnight, or early Saturday morning. Problem solved.

Today, like yesterday, we’ve accomplished some provisioning for the boat such as updating the signal flares, purchasing a better ladder to go from the Walker Bay dinghy to the sailboat, and a protective cover for the outboard motor on the dinghy.  We’ve also purchased canned and dry food to be consumed during our first leg, Baltimore to Norfolk.  It could take as long as 36 hours and should be challenging for many reasons.

This is the first leg of the trip for Oblivion and her crew.  We will be learning to work with each other and learn how the boat handles as well as how we handle the boat.  Plus, we will have to keep close watch as we are sailing well-traveled cargo and military lanes.  Also for this leg, we will be seeing how the bells and whistles work such as the new Lowrance Elite 4 Chartplotter.

We are anxious to go!