While I was cleaning the boat many evil visions entered my mind. Thoughts of electrifying the boat and arriving to see seagulls and cormorants hanging dead from every appendage. Birds floating lifeless in the water encircling the boat. I even thought about hanging one seagull from the spreaders in hopes that it would scare all his buddies away. Then another vision hit me offsetting the other visions, Animal Rights Activist picketing my boat, huge fines, and possibly jail time. All the anger faded away when the mess was cleaned up. My bark is much more then my bite, I really love seabirds and would not harm them.
 I decided then, because they made my life miserable, I would think of ways to make their life miserable. For the next few weeks I launched an inspection campaign of the moored boats in my area that attracted birds and a closer inspection of the boats that the birds kept away from. There were boats with owls mounted on the spreaders, plastic trash bags tied everywhere, plastic flags draped in and out of the rigging, paper plates strung like Christmas ornaments, pie tin mobiles placed in strategic locations, plastic snakes, brooms and garden racks decorate the tops of mast...
To my dismay all of these boats had bird droppings on them. I also noticed that the birds did not land on all of the boats until early evening when the wind subsided, most of these apparatuses will only work when the wind is blowing. The owls definitely did not do their job, in fact, I saw seagulls and owls perched together like bar buddies. Then I saw what might be the key to what I was searching for. I observed two boats that were separated by approximately 25 feet and moored together. One boat had its boom completely covered with bird droppings and the other boat was clean. The boom that was free from droppings was supported by a jack line that went from one end of the boom to the other end of the boom. Simply, the jack line prevented the birds from landing. No landing equals no guano, could this really be the answer? Later that same day I tied a line to the end of the boom, around the mast, and back to end of the boom again. The next weekend when I arrived at the boat I was happy to see that there were no droppings on the boom cover. It worked.
 I then proceeded to add permanent lines to places that would keep the birds from landing like at the spreaders and on top of the mast. To my delight, this also worked. A few other areas needed some attention; namely the foredeck and cockpit areas. Instead of running lines back and forth over them, which would be very time consuming I purchased netting from a marine store and attached lines to the net with plastic hook shackles to the ends. The netting is used for extreme seabird problems. For most boats the temporary and permanent lines will handle the job. With the netting I could simply attach and detach it from or to the lower life lines with ease. Finally my boat is about 95% seagull safe. The only droppings that appear are usually fly-by droppings. I have no more stop, squat, and drops to clean up.