Bananas on a boat
Bananas on a boat are unlucky in fishermen's lore, and many captains still ban them. Nobody agrees on why, and the taboo outlives every reason anyone gives for it.
What it may mean
Ask ten fishermen why bananas are banned on board and you may hear ten stories: ships that sank and left only floating fruit, banana boats so fast that no one trolling behind them caught a thing, spiders hiding in the bunches, ripening fruit that spoiled the rest of the cargo. None of the stories has much evidence behind it, and the rule carries on regardless. It has become part of belonging to a crew, the kind of thing you learn on your first trip and enforce on someone else's. Many rules in families and workplaces work the same way. The original reason is long gone, yet people keep the rule because keeping it says you are one of them. It is worth knowing which of your own rules still have a reason, and which simply have members.
Depending on how you saw it
Banana bread, snacks or sunscreen
Some crews stretch the ban to banana bread, banana-flavored snacks and even sunscreen with a banana on the label. A rule without a clear reason has no clear edge either. Where has one of your own rules spread far past the thing it was made for?
Carrying one aboard by accident
A guest who unpacks a banana on a fishing charter may see it go straight over the side, often with a laugh and a tale. The newcomer learns the rule by breaking it. How do you treat someone who breaks a rule they could not have known?
On a sailboat or a tour boat
The taboo belongs above all to fishing boats. On sailing yachts and sightseeing boats, bananas sit in the fruit bowl like anywhere else. The same object means trouble in one crew and breakfast in another. Which of your worries belongs to one setting only?
Why it happens in nature
Ripening bananas give off ethylene gas, which speeds the ripening and rotting of other fruit packed close by, a real problem in the holds of old cargo ships. Fishing also has long empty stretches that nobody can explain, and folklorists who collect the custom describe it as fishermen's occupational lore tied to blaming an empty day on the water.
To reflect on
Which rule do you keep mainly because keeping it shows you belong?