Boat Etiquette 101: Clothing Optional Anchorages

Imagine your cap’n and you are anchored in a secluded bay, there’s no one around for miles and you’re doing the Brooke Shields and Chris What-ever-his-name-was Blue Lagoon thing. You haven’t put a stitch on for days and you’re starting to get a little sore on your tender parts. (From sunburn, you perverts). You just came up the companionway with two more cold ones when you spy something on the horizon.

“What the hell is that?”

“It kinda looks like a boat,” the cap’n replies.

Dismay starts creeping in…

“Surely they aren’t coming in here.”

“There’s plenty of room. We’ll probably never even see them.” the cap’n offers magnanimously.

An hour later the crew of the other boat wave and holler out greetings as you scramble to put on clothes. They pass by so close you’re afraid they are going to ask if you happen to have some “Grey Poupon”.

Your horror grows as you watch the first mate move to the bow and commence doing the “Anchoring Dance”*. You don’t even have to get out the binoculars to watch them.

There goes the neighborhood!

I have been asked to share some rules of cruising etiquette with you newbies and you not so newbies who should know better. Just consider me the Miss Manners of the cruising world. The scenario above is the subject that comes up most often on the irksome scale. It seems that most capn’s didn’t really want to go explore the world when they convinced you to move aboard a boat, they just wanted to get you naked.

Rule # 1:

If you sail in to a secluded anchorage and there is another boat there, give them their space. Believe me, they are not going to be enthusiastic about an impromptu raft-up. By all means go and meet them but have the decency to respect their indecency by giving them a shout out on the radio or waiting until they go into the beach, if they have clothes on. If you fail to heed this advice, we….uh, I mean they can’t be held responsible for what you’ll encounter. And believe me again, it ain’t always pretty.

And for God’s sake stow the binoculars, or at least use some stealth when using them. There is nothing more embarrassing than to be caught spying through your binoculars to find a pair (binoculars, you pervs) staring back at you.

Rule #2:

On the flip side. Know when to keep your clothes on. You’re members of a community now and not some charterer who’s jumping naked off the Willy T with a cap’n you’ve never seen before in front of people you’ll never seen again. (Those were the days!). The locals of most islands are very religious and conservative, and besides that there are cameras everywhere and do you really want little Johnny Googling his grandmother and seeing that?

If you’re in a harbour and within viewing distance of restaurants or boats keep your clothes on. And please don’t engage in questionable calisthenics on your catamaran’s trampoline. The men are gonna love you and the women gonna hate you. It causes unnecessary tension and eyestrain.

A bathing suit is fine on the boat and beach but cover up when going to town. If you don’t look good in a bathing suit it’s bad enough and if you look good, again…the men are gonna love you and the women gonna hate you.

That being said, if I had the goods I’d be strutting them to heaven and back.


P.S. When I started this article I was gonna write one article about all of the etiquette issues cruisers encounter but I found there was just too much to say. Ya’ll know how wordy I get. It must be the southern in me, his name is Jack Daniels. Just joshin’ ya! Wink wink nod nod. Anywho, this has become a series of smack downs, the next one being about the radio.

* I want to give credit to Eileen Quinn for the term the Anchoring Dance which I stole from one of her CD’s that I own. She has provided us with a lot of laughs and a few tears through the years with her music. I have links to two of her CD’s that have this song on them way down yonder in the Amazon area of this site. And yes I do get a little money if you buy through me, but not enough to buy you a beer in the Bahamas. If you’ve never heard her song “Friends” your missing the anthem about what cruising is all about.