Town bans bananas in preparation for boat festival

A ban on bananas has been imposed in a small Scottish town ahead of its traditional boat festival. Superstitious seafarers regard bananas as bad luck on board boats and festival organisers have come up with the unusual move to ward off any potential misfortune to the North-east’s biggest maritime celebration, which takes place in Portsoy, Aberdeenshire, on July 4 and 5.



Banana ban signs have been posted, a banana amnesty has been introduced and local businesses have come out in support of the action, with Portsoy Ice Cream removing banana flavoured ices from its range until after the event. Roger Goodyear, chairman of the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Traditional Boat Festival, says: “Bananas may be a delicious fruit but they are considered bad luck on boats.



“We want to do everything possible to make sure our 2015 festival is a success and we don’t want to take any chances.Our ban on bananas is a tongue-in-cheek nod to our seafaring heritage and is a reminder that the ocean can be a mystical, but dangerous, place and as such there are many traditional superstitions among fisher people.” There are several theories on why people believe bananas are bad luck for a boat.



One is that back in the early days of the banana trade, crews would overload the banana boats when leaving the tropics, resulting in the boats capsizing in bad weather. Another is that wooden sailing boats involved in the Caribbean trade of the 1700s had to move so quickly to deliver bananas before they spoiled that the crew had a hard job catching fish. It has also been suggested that it's because bananas harboured dangerous spiders whose bite could be painful or even fatal.