If a sailboat lies unattended, even for a short time, decks and canvas can quickly become grubby from bird droppings and windblown dust. I have counted fifty of the little darlings perched along the triatic stay on my schooner Britannia, all having a merry chirp while doing other things.

This article is an extensive review of products that are supposed to frighten birds off boats, including acoustic devices. In testing many of them I finally came to the conclusion that it's practically impossible to keep birds off every part of a sailboat's rigging, where they will sometimes hang even on vertical wires. I decided that the most effective and also the cheapest method for keeping bird droppings of a sailboat is with an awning. There is also a secondary benefit from a good awning. It keeps the temperature down inside the boat; in Britannia’s case by some 10 degrees Fahrenheit when it’s 90 outside.

This article explains how to make an effective awning using a cheap tarp

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