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Cruiser's Regatta

The highlight of the George Town cruising season is, undoubtedly, the Cruiser's Regatta. Started 30 years ago as a way for cruisers in Elizabeth Harbour to have some organized fun and to raise money to support the Bahamian Family Island Regatta (which we attended last year and wrote about extensively), the Cruiser's Regatta is two weeks worth of summer camp for adults. Pushed largely by our good friends on Side by Side, we participated in a host of activities in the Cruiser's Regatta, including the Opening Night talent show (Nancy and Chris played flute and sang in a chorus, respectively, in a performance of Barry Manilow's "One Voice"), the Coconut Challenge, a scavenger hunt, Trivial Pursuit, a sand sculpture contest, a bocce tournament, and an around Stocking Island sailboat race on Liberty.

The hit of the Opening Night talent show, winning first place overall, was a production of "George Town Squares", written and performed by Chris & Josh, and Sabrina & Parker of Side by Side, with help from Dylan on Brydyl Ankar, and nine "celebrity" guests from the cruising community. They even got the famous Chris Parker, the weather guru we listen to six days a week on our single sideband radio, to play himself as the "mystery guest". Spoofing common and well-known George Town events, almost every line of the show got laughs from the crowd, and Parker (playing the announcer) and Chris (playing "Peter Marshall, Jr.", the host), plus Josh and Sabrina (playing the two contestants) delivered their lines flawlessly. The celebrity guests were also a collective hoot, drawing many laughs as they adlibbed their way through their parts. Theirs was the only act that included children and we don't think the judges were prepared for it because the prize was a bottle of rum! The parents gladly accepted it and the next day, the Regatta Committee awarded each of the five children a large Hershey bar - quite a treat for children in the islands.

The "Coconut Challenge" was another fun day. Nancy and Dave teamed with Marc and Angie from Side by Side for three events - the coconut harvest, a coconut carry, and a coconut toss. For the coconut harvest, we emptied our inflatable dinghy and removed the motor, and with only four swim fins and a bucket we pushed off the beach (along with 8 other teams) into small "Hole 1" behind the Chat n Chill on Volleyball Beach where 1000 coconuts had just been released into the water. The object, of course, was to collect as many floating coconuts as possible while paddling around with the swim fins and using the bucket to douse other teams as they gathered coconuts. For the coconut carry, Dave, Nancy and Angie formed a circle while Mark stacked 10 coconuts in the "well" between their bodies. Then it was off around the three marks of a race course on the sand volleyball court, including an exciting duck under the net, all without allowing any coconuts to fall from our tight circle. Finally, the coconut toss, each teammate having three seconds to heft a coconut from the sand and throw it over a volleyball net into a large, medium or small rope circle for 1, 3 or 5 points. After respectable 4th place finishes in the harvest and carry events, the team of "Side by Liberty" managed a 2nd place on the coconut toss, but it was not enough to pull us up above a 4th place finish overall. In the afternoon three dinghies met again in Hole 1 for the "family coconut harvest," with teams composed of parents and children (but in mixed couples, not family units). Adults and kids alike had a great time paddling around scooping up coconuts. The next day, the adults were feeling muscles they didn't know they had!

In the Around Stocking Island race (an 18+ mile course with downwind sailing in the harbor and the upwind leg offshore), we had a great beginning with Liberty sailing well off the wind. As we turned upwind for the offshore leg, however, the webbing holding the top of our genoa (headsail) parted and the sail slid down the headstay partway into the water! We recovered the sail to the deck, and then called the race committee to announce our situation and to change our entry to the motorsailing division. We had fishing lines out (hoping for a big one to win the fishing competition), but managed to catch only a small, skinny mackerel. Angie baked a fantastic key lime pie during the 4 hour trip on a healing monohull and we did very well in the baking competition, and Nancy's photo of the four kids in sport coats and swim suits saluting the race committee boat as we crossed the starting line took second place in the photo competition. Liberty also managed to squeak out a first place victory in the motorsailing class (which had had no entries prior to our sail parting), good for a bottle of rum and a blue burgee to fly in our rigging.

In order to support the race, Dave also announced (about a week before the event) the "Morgan Challenge", a bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum to the fastest Morgan sailboat in the race. There are quite a few Morgans here, but at the time Liberty was the only one signed up to race. Now, the Morgan Out Island series sailboats (a shoal draft design, and what Liberty is) have always had the reputation of sailing like dogs, especially to windward, so its understandable why most Morgan owners didn't sign up for the race. On hearing Dave announce the "Morgan Challenge," Bob and Pam on Paragon signed up. Although Charley Morgan is most well known for his shoal draft Out Island series (over 1000, and some say over 1500, Morgan 41 Out Islands were built between 1970 and 1985, making it one of the most successful designs in American sailing history), he designed a lot of boats in his long, productive career, including a 41 foot yawl called a "one ton", so named because of the racing class that dictated the design of the boat. Paragon is a one ton, the same length as Liberty, and even the same draft - 4'3" - but with at least two key differences. First, her beam is just about 11 feet wide, compared to Liberty's nearly 14 feet, and second, she has a 9'8" centerboard, while Liberty is stuck with its shoal draft, full keel all the time. Needless to say, Paragon handily won the Morgan Challenge, and would have even if our sail had not come apart at the seams! Most importantly, though, we forged a new friendship.