Now Bob and I have moved on to Little Farmer’s Cay where the big festival and regatta have taken place over the last two days. This is another side of island culture! Bahamians from all over have arrived to participate in this festival, and they’ve all come by boat! Even various government officials have come to this festival (probably by that little prop plane that I keep seeing), and it’s remarkable to see what pride they all take in their country and their culture. I am in awe! The mail boat arrived with four (not three!) Class C Bahamian sloops on board and many crates of food and drink for the festival, and lots of people. I learned that it left Wednesday night around 10pm, from Nassau, in order to arrive on Little Farmer’s Cay at 8am on Friday morning. Since there are no sleeping accommodations on the mail boat everyone just stayed up and partied all night. That’s why we saw passengers drinking beer on arrival first thing in the morning… they had not stopped all night! And now I understand the blaring island music as well!
Others arrived by smaller powerboats. I don’t know how other sloops arrived to make a total of nine boats to race in the 2-day regatta. There were also souvenirs for sale, brought in by boat as well.
There was much pomp and circumstance, that somehow blended seamlessly with the most casual sense of getting anything done…. it’s hard to describe, but easy to enjoy! No one seemed particularly hurried or stressed in getting everything off the mail boat and down the road (which involved walking and driving on the runway for the little airstrip), but somehow everything was set up and ready to go by the time that first race of the regatta took place around noon.
This man is some sort of minister for the government. I wish I’d paid more attention!
And the sailing regatta! On the second day I had the camera, and I was so enthralled in the event that I took just under 400 photos! There was only one race the first day because the winds got too fierce for even these hardened sailors to handle. But Saturday there were three races, and Bob participated in all of them, on the sloop Thunderbird. They did not end up winning a trophy, but it was obvious that every boat had moments of brilliant strategy and feats of daring!
This is one crazy sport! The boats have only one huge sail, and to balance that canvas (and it literally is cotton canvas in an age when all other boats have moved on to Dacron or even more high tech synthetic materials)… as said, to balance all that canvas there are removable planks that slide under the gunwale to extend well out over the water on the windward side of the boat (that is the opposite side to the sail). The crew scramble out onto these planks, called ‘prides,’ in order to balance the weight of the boom and sail on the other side, which would capsize the boat if not for the crew hiking out on the prides. When these boats come about on a different tack, which means bringing the boom and sail to other side of the boat, the crew scrambles down the pride back into the cockpit, yanks out the pride and shoves it into the gunwale on the other side. Then they all scramble out onto it again. There is plenty of risk of injury. Just moving the pride from one side to the other offers lots of chance for getting hit by this big plank of oak, or getting fingers broken when maneuvering it. The men all end up with lots of bruises from scrambling out on these things, and they call their injuries ‘boat bites.’
During these races there are plenty of mishaps. While you are out on the pride you hold on by locking your legs under the pride, but there is very little to hold on to with your hands. The guy farthest out has no handhold and must rely on his locked legs to keep him from falling in the water. During the first race Bob was the farthest man out on the plank when the captain realized that Bob just didn’t weigh enough to be out there. He told him to switch places, but no one was to move off the plank, so Bob had to climb over the other guys while under sail and hiked up high off the water. I don’t know how he did it. There were plenty of times on all the boats when someone almost fell off the pride into the water, but it didn’t happen.
Can you see Bob? He’s third from the end in this photo.
There were lots of boat casualties, and I understand it’s quite common for at least one boat to sink in every race. At this regatta two boats sank, one during the first race and one during the second. After that, while there were plenty of boat mishaps, none of them sank again. During that second race Thunderbird’s boom raked across the boom of Golden Girl and then caught Golden Girl’s forestay, which dragged it over far enough that Golden Girl went down and sank. Someone on a powerboat nearby was enraged by this event and began ramming into Thunderbird. Several times this powerboat actually rode up onto the deck of Thunderbird. Bob said at one point he had to duck as the powerboat drove right up onto the deck of Thunderbird, with Bob crouching right below it in the cockpit. There was no penalty for any of this… after a few minutes the guy in the powerboat took off and wasn’t seen again.
There were other wild moments during the races. The start involves all the boats anchoring right along the starting line. When the gun goes off they all pull up anchor while also raising sail. The motion of pulling up the anchor gives a bit of a jump start to the sail filling with wind and the race is off and running. At the first race on Friday, Thunderbird’s captain chose the spot right next to the starting buoy to anchor as a prime place for the starboard tack beginning leg. Two other boats liked that idea and moved the buoy in order to anchor in this prime position. There was no penalty for this! Then a bit later, one of the boats went around the wrong side of one of the marks, and this too was not contested. Rules seem a bit casual here, and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone.
The starting line… Thunderbird is at the far left.
Thunderbird (on right) crossing paths with Lady Eunice. Bob is exchanging places on the pride with some of the other crew.
So, I’ll try to pick a few of the 400 photos. While the boats were too far away on their course I got some shots of the locals. Beautiful people!
We were thrilled to find that “Tall Boy” came all the way from Potter’s Cay in Nassau to make his famous conch salads at the festival! This time I made sure to have one!
And this pretty much sums up how both Bob and I feel these days:
