We’ve had a flag halyard on our starboard spreader for several years and had a small burgee on that halyard until it wore out. We would occasionally hang a US flag on the halyard. It tended to thump on the spreaders and it started to get ratty by rubbing on the mast because we have a prevailing breeze from the west and we face south. So we added a second halyard to the port spreader for the US flag. But then found out that Old Glory isn’t supposed to be flown from that location on a boat. So we pulled out our Chapman’s Piloting Seamanship and Small Boat Handling and here’s what it says:
All boats, when at anchor, fly it from the stern staff. Optional when underway…2/3 up the leech of the mainsail
We didn’t consider a stern staff because the flag would be flapping into our barbeque. Clearly putting a flag on the leech of the mainsail isn’t practical, so most sailboats hang a flag off the backstay. But how do you climb the backstay? Rich was able to use our mast-climbing rig but it was a little precarious. Once we had it hung we got a bunch of social media comments (some of them pretty nasty) about it not being high enough (it isn’t 2/3 up the backstay). We also got some very nice comments from former military servicemen that appreciated that we’d hung a US flag up at all. After considering raising it up we decided to leave it for now. We can’t please everyone nor do we want to try and we like where it is. In the grand scheme of things, a few angry social media commenters just aren’t significant enough to get all worked up about.
