Murphy’s Laws for Sailors

Murphy’s Laws for Sailors or 20 Rules of Everyday Life Aboard a Yacht 🙂 Three years of living aboard a yacht as a family, a passage across the Atlantic Ocean , temperate and very tropical latitudes, calms under the blazing sun and storms in the winter Mediterranean—we distilled all that experience into rules that work regardless of how we feel about them :): The captain’s orders are not up for discussion. If the cap says scratch your backside, the entire crew scratches their backsides in unison and only then asks why. (Our well-brought-up young sailors suggested replacing “scratch your backside” with “jump.”) If you get seasick in your own bed, it means the bed has gone to sea along with the cabin and the vessel it is aboard. If you do not get seasick, take plenty of rum on your sea cruise—then you can tell your girlfriend that you “just drank way too much.” If you thought flying saucers were an invention of science-fiction writers, you will find yourself fending them off in the galley at the very moment the cap orders you to reef the sails. If something can break, it definitely will, even if it is behind a cupboard door. If, during a storm, the cap and the mate are standing upright on the bridge, you are watching a feature film from the end of the last century. The rule “If you pick it up quickly, it doesn’t count as dropped” does not work on a yacht . You will not be able to retrieve anything dropped overboard quickly anyway, and by the time you can, there will be nothing left to retrieve. If you come to the tropics, you will spend six months washing the cabin with vinegar in the hope of getting rid of the mould. Then you will switch to bleach. Or resign yourself to it. If something aboard the yacht does not go mouldy, it will definitely rust. Even if it is stainless steel. Even if it is not made of metal. You will understand what the anode on the hull is for when you see the holes for the pins in the sectional aluminium oars (within a couple of years, they will become twice as wide without any mechanical wear). If you acquire a second-hand yacht with almost-new wood panelling, even above the sink, it means it was replaced before the sale (or heavily sanded and painted). You will discover this about six months later. “Dry” food in any container that is not airtight will end its existence in one of two ways: it will be eaten by fauna in the form of bugs or by flora in the form of mould. If you think it is time to reduce sail, it means you have already missed the right moment to do so. If you think you learned how to pack a cupboard tightly back in childhood, one night at sea you will find yourself wedging hastily grabbed towels between clinking tins and saucepans. Then you will spend a month looking everywhere for your T-shirts except in the crockery cupboard. If food is sitting in the cockpit during a sea passage, someone will inevitably sit on it. If you hear an explosive pop from a locker, be prepared to unscrew part of the panelling to extract the balloon that used to be a life jacket. A wind-flapping awning will surprise you with the places where it can tear. If you did not bring a pet aboard the yacht, a cute little gecko will move in when you reach South America (from personal experience). The more carefully your route is planned, the greater the confusion will be if something goes wrong. If you are afraid of finding yourself out at sea, relax: at any point on the globe, no more than 12 km separates you from solid ground. Straight down. 🙂 If you found this article useful and would like to thank the authors but do not know how, click the button below 🙂