We are currently at the 5F-First Friday Fun Festival at Farmers Cay We were finally able to hook up with our good friends from our marina in NC – Donny and Diana who have the same boat that we have (well, not the same boat, but one just like it). We first met Donny when we were boat shopping three years ago and he was our broker. He has remained a friend and a great help as we have refitted our boat. There is little on a boat that Donny has not dealt with. We’ve also met Richard and Michelle, who have figured out how to do the cruising thing much younger than Mary Beth and I did. Two engineers in their mid 20’s who just bought their boat in November and here they are! In comparison, it took us three years to feel close to ready. Is the difference the creativity and energy of youth or the naiveté of youth?! We are so impressed with their attitude towards life!
Back to the festival... it’s still not clear what exactly this festival is. Mostly it is a sailing regatta or series of races for Bahamian sailors in their handmade C class Cat boats. But there is more to it than that-otherwise there wouldn’t be the 100+ cruiser boats here! For example, there was supposed to be a race for cruisers on their own boats, and it was supposed to start sometime between 11:30 yesterday and an undefined time today. Only minutes apart, we heard on the VHF radio that it would start at 11:30 yesterday (it was 11:45 when we heard this), and also sometime today. There were only two boats signed up as of last night. Fortunately one was our new friend Richard’s boat on which Donny and David were going to crew, so we figured we were guaranteed to place. Apparently they cancelled the cruisers race today, but there weren’t any announcements that it was cancelled….ah, the islands!
The first C class race did take place today though even though the wind was very light. There were about 20 boats from islands all over the Bahamas. Unlike in sailboat races MB has participated in, this was a contact sport. There was much yelling (similar to US races!), but also much pushing and shoving between the boats, boats hitting the last mark when rounding it (you are disqualified in the US if you touch the mark or push on other boats) and boats sculling their tillers back and forth to move in the light air. We even saw sailors stepping across the water to other boats to make the yelling and arguing easier.
Rounding the last mark:
One of the past champions is from Black Point settlement that we previously visited and his boat is named “Smashie”-see picture below. We’re not sure if the name is indicative of his racing strategy or his pre-race hydration technique.
A group of high school sailors from a local island won today’s race which may have been a bit of a surprise for some of the adult veterans. I suspect their light weight may have helped in this almost non-existent wind day! There was a beach restaurant where most people watched the race with the usual good food and drinks and music playing and also people just sat on their anchored boats, some of which were in the middle of the course. We took the dinghy out behind the fleet and watched up close towards the end which was a lot of fun.
Games are part of any festival and this one was no exception. We won two games today-an unorthodox egg toss game and a balloon popping game that might be better left unexplained! Our prizes were a bottle of vodka and a carton of eggs! We are very proud that we were the oldest couple in the games and we won 2 of the 3 prizes! Young people these days just take rules so seriously.
The town here is tiny and quite cute with a few small restaurant/bar institutions, a small marina and a very friendly population of about 55 residents. Our friends Brett, Kim and Mike whom we first met back at Palm Cay Marina in Nassau when we were there to pick up our kids for the holidays have been here for a couple weeks and have ended up fixing all the moorings for the owner of the marina who is in his 80s and really not up to diving on mooring blocks, connecting new chain and line all in a strong current. Mary Beth did help on one yesterday and finally got to use her scuba dive gear for the first time since her certification. She had fun and looked like an old pro.
Brett, Kim and Mike also took us to an underwater inland cave that they had explored. We took a 20 minute dinghy ride around Oven Rock (I’m sure you’ve heard of it - not) and beached on the southern point of Great Guana Cay (not Guano – no bats). Fortunately our friends had scoped out the trail a few days before. They spent hours finding the cave, but knowing the way we arrived there with about 15 minutes of walking. From the outside it looks like just a normal cave-like an opening in a coral island, but as you walk in, it descends a bit and gets darker and darker. Inside is a pool of water that is reputed to be 70 feet deep. We had brought masks and snorkels and a couple of waterproof lights. The cave turned out to be very deep and much more expansive that it appeared from the edge. It was so eerie. Being in the water with no natural light is a very strange and uneasy feeling. The cave walls and stalactites were all grey, the water was very clear and there was very little life (we spotted one small fish and a tiny shrimp). This is one of David’s favorite things so far. It was so other-worldly – silent, dark, a bit ominous, and cold.
This formation looked like a howling wolf!
One interesting thing we learned about Little Farmers Cay is that it is “Generational” (at least we think that is the term). The land is owned by residents, but they are not allowed to sell it. It was settled by a freed slave who bought the land from the English Crown and willed it to their ancestors. Land is passed on to children and descendants and never sold. If you do the math, that doesn’t seem to work for very long. Everyone who owns land is descended from original settlers, and these islands have been settled since the late 1700’s, so that’s a lot of generations. It would seem that residents would now be down to lots the size of an outhouse, but that doesn’t isn’t the case. The only loophole is that they can lease it to others. For example, if I owned land and found someone who wanted to live here I could negotiate a 100 yr lease and they could build a house, but I could not sell the land to them. At the end of the lease it reverts back to the owner.
This cay has a small airstrip, and there is a fair amount of small plane traffic, especially for the festival. The runway starts on one shore and ends on the opposite one. It’s not a big island and it’s really not a very long airstrip either. This gives you a sense of scale for the place. This morning we saw 3 planes come in. There are lots of sailboats with masts all over the place at both ends of the runway. All three of these planes had to fly between the sailboat masts on their final approach. Their wings were lower than the masts. That was very interesting to see and I’m glad we were not in the approach.
On the boat work side, David finally started to strip some of the external teak to get it ready for fresh varnish and MB thought about attacking some of the rust on the stainless steel. Fortunately some heavy rain interrupted these plans. Perhaps we’ll get back to it after the regatta … or maybe not. Tomorrow we are going lobster spear fishing for the first time!