About bananas and a bad day fishing or sailing
By MARTY SCHIRMACHER, www.bananafish.biz

Well, about six years ago I took my father to the Outer Banks of North Carolina on his first trip to experience the thrill of off-shore fishing. We booked the boat "Country Girl" out of Pirates Cove with Captain "Big Al" and mate Randy and early in the morning we loaded our supplies (including bananas) on the boat and set for the open sea. We were out to our fishing destination for over an hour and nothing was happening other than a snapped line, a close catch of a big yellow fin that got away at the last second and another that became shark chow...not to good.

That's about when Randy came through the cabin and suddenly stopped, backed up and looked in the trash can. Next thing I knew he asked in, an upset tone, who had the bananas. He said the Captain was going to probably cancel the trip, our day was shot, we weren't going to catch anything and so on and so forth. I looked at Randy and said "yeah right..." but then I saw that he wasn't kidding, which prompted me to ask what was wrong.

Randy then let me know that bananas are extremely bad luck to have on a fishing or sailing boat and he told us to throw all the remaining bananas overboard. We did without hesitation after seeing how genuine Randy was. By this time, Captain Big Al had caught wind of our evil mistake and had a talk with Randy. They thought we ruined the day because we'd brought those bananas, but they said that they would be willing to keep us out for the remaining hours of our trip and since the bananas had all been ejected maybe things wouldn't go any more downhill.

Wouldn't you know, from that time on we started hauling in the yellow fin tunas, released a sail fish and played the bullhead dolphin fish (mahi) by the dozens and everybody had a blast.

On the return trip most of the party was napping from their busy day, so I ventured to the flying bridge to talk to Big Al. When I brought up the subject of the bananas, he got that look on his face like I just told him his boat would look better in pink. He told me that the phobia against bananas on boats is taken very seriously, yet he couldn't tell me why this was or the origin of the curse. I said to him "well you have your tuna flag for when you catch tuna and your marlin flag for when you catch marlin so you should have a banana flag for when you catch nothing or have a bad day" and he looked at me and said "not a bad idea."

I started thinking about the legend of the curse of bananas for fishermen and wondered how far spread it was, where the legend came from, and what can I do with it?

When I returned home I started doing a little research and I was surprised to find that this was not a local superstition, but was known up and down both coasts of North America, as well as in Hawaii, the United Kingdom, and much of the coast of South America. Now I needed to know where the legend came from. I surfed the Net, talked with lots of sailors and fishermen, and I was amazed that, although so many fishermen believed in the curse of the bananas, none of them knew the origin. I kept digging and eventually I found out why the bananas earned their reputation among the fishing fleets and sailors.

Now when I go out to sea I leave the bananas at home and fly one of my "NO BANANAS" flags and we always have a good day.

THE STORY

The BananaFish was created from the story of long-ago fisherman and sailors who believed that bananas on board their boats brought bad luck. It seems that many, many years ago a sailing ship entered port with supplies bound for a fishing fleet. Among the supplies were bushels of bananas. These supplies were distributed through out the fishing fleet. After loading their supplies, the fishing boats raised their sails and headed for the open ocean, unaware that the banana bushels were infested with black widow spiders. As crew members started to sift through their supplies, they were being bitten by the poisonous spiders. Lots of those bitten met a terrible fate, since the boats were so far from shore and there was no time to get to help. Many boats returned with a lot of their crew dead and in some cases the boats never returned at all, could be there were no survivors to sail the boat back.

Since then, bananas have been considered taboo on sailing and fishing boats, and became associated with bad luck. Some people even believe that the spirits of those who perished from the fishing fleet carry the curse of bad luck with all bananas. Therefore it is forbidden to have bananas on board!

From Capt. Mel Berman:

Dear Marty:

That's a very interesting take about the "banana jinx" that so many who fish seem to share. Another source of the banana phobia that I've heard is that the bananas spoil more rapidly than other fruits and vegetables which, when transported in un-refrigerate vessels of many years ago, would go bad -- and affect the other produce on board.