We went to the Georgetown Family Regatta races today. We are in
Georgetown on Great Exuma island. This is a 'big town' in the Bahamas.
The races here are famous throughout the Bahamas. Each island builds
a boat and sends it here to compete. The boats are hand made wooden
boats with a single sail. The sails are huge relative to the boat and
the only way they can make the boat sail is by using humans as movable
ballast. When they need ballast to one side to keep it from tipping
over they rig a board up way way out to the side and make the crew
climb out there. In this picture you can see several crew members
hanging way out over the water riding on said boards. It's nuts.
Extreme agility is required to keep the boat balanced. Some of the
crew have compromised their agility by having a few ounces of ethanol
(C2H5OH, for you chemistry buffs) before the race. As a consequence
several of the boats tipped into the water during the race. One of
them T-boned a competitor while attempting to round the mark (many
many words were exchanged, quite heated ones at that), and one boat
sank into the harbor before the race even started. How you even begin
to sink a race boat at the slip I have no idea. But there it was. A
dozen guys trying to raise the thing before race time. And it was
still there the next day.
Luckily, most of the competitors survived.
Ashore, loud music played, conch were sacrificed, school children
performed and a fair was held. It was a celebratory day.
I had an offer to rode on one of the boats but I decided to go ashore
and eat conch salad instead.
The conch salad was good.
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