5 F's (02/03/13)

 After a couple of leisurely and enjoyable days at Black Point Settlement, we headed for Little Farmers Cay for the 5F’s festival (First Friday in February Festival at Farmers). 

With a distance of less than 10 miles to go, we headed out early to hopefully secure a mooring at the Farmers Cay Yacht Club.  There wasn’t much in the way of wind so we motored and were then in just under two hours, almost beating the rising time of all of the staff at Farmers – ah, Bahamian time!

We were, in fact, lucky enough to “score” a mooring in the more protected east side of the island to keep us secure during the projected big winds coming.  We tied up with little problem and headed to land.  Farmers Cay boasts a year round population of about 55 people almost entirely from one original family.  Mr. Roosevelt Nixon, the owner of the yacht club, is a kind and gracious man with a lovely family we were fortunate to meet throughout the weekend.

This festival is their biggest event of the year.  There are three places to eat on the island and all of them had their particular place in the festival.  It was fun moving from place to place on this island of less than a couple square miles.  Bahamians came in droves to cheer on their island teams and the cruisers were there too – over 75 boats were anchored or moored. 

We did some great beach exploration with new friends aboard Pegasus and Java before the weekend officially began.  We wandered the coast of the nearby shoreline and found a host of baby conch shells and even some sea beans.  With the most beautiful day we’ve seen since being in the Bahamas, we swam and enjoyed it fully.

The racing was so fun to watch and some cruisers even signed on as crew on a couple of the boats.  The winds were really strong, gusting to almost 30 knots the first day and 3 of the boats capsized and were out of the competition.  The second race of the day was cancelled and the Bahamians and the cruisers headed to their respective places for the night to watch their anchors and wait for the winds to subside.

Rob and I stayed ashore the entire day wandering from place to place and meeting people and otherwise occupying ourselves.  We were some of the last cruisers “out” and we went to the race site to grab a plate of BBQ for dinner. 

The food was great with big plates of barbeque or fresh conch salads.  We were the only cruisers in the place which was filled with Bahamians from the surrounding islands doing their utmost to take advantage of the weekend’s partying.

Yesterday saw more reasonable winds and three races were held.  Although the sun didn’t show much, it was a great day with good racing and lots of celebrating.  We joined forces with our new friends on Pegasus and Java for a sundown dinner and a new card game for us called Golf – this is one we’ll be playing for years!  We made plans for our return to Black Point for Super Bowl reveling today and called it a day. 

Yesterday marked our one month stay in the Bahamas and certainly was a great way to usher in the balance of our journey here!