We sailed into Arthur's Town after departing from New Bight just after sunset. We dropped anchor in the dark while an alternating mix of American Hip Hop and local Rake 'n' Scrape music blared from the direction of a few flickering lights on the coast. In the morning we could see where it was all coming from, a little bar with a hut overlooking the vibrant turquoise water. The bar has two floor-to-ceiling height speakers sitting just outside the front doors facing the beach.
Unlike New Bight, Arthur's Town has a rocky coast, so you have to wedge a dinghy anchor somewhere in the rocks, let it float it the shallows, and scramble up to the walkway.
But behind the rocks, calm clear shallows swirl atop soft white sand making it a perfect beach.
We walked the town to inquire about the location of the Rake 'n' Scrape festival that evening. There weren't that many people around, but we were offered a ride out to the site by the first person we asked. Her name was Flora, and she was going to be making crab at the festival! Crab is my favorite and I had yet to see it on a menu in the Bahamas.
The Rake 'n' Scrape festival began around sunset. Rake 'n' Scrape is a form of Goombay music (native to the Bahamas) that originated on Cat Island. The music requires a Goombay drum and scraping a carpenters saw with a metal file. Like all saw music (Rip Saw of the Turks and Caicos, Hoedown of Appalachia, etc..) It originated when the people had to make instruments out of whatever they had. Now it has evolved into a full blown genre with the accompaniment of saxophones, harmonics. electric guitars, and any other instrument appropriate for the composition. You will probably hear it sitting at any local establishment in the Bahamas. That evening child and adult groups performed to compete for cash prizes and titles. The musical performances were accompanied by small troops dancing the Bahamian Quadrille or Heel and Toe Polka - dances evolved specifically for the boisterous Rake 'n' Scrape sound.
The picture below sums up the Bahamas pretty well. It is a very wholesome place. Every festival is an all ages family friendly affair. FYI to any parents out there who want a remote chill beach vacation in a place where all local events are for the whole family (and swearing is prohibited!)- the Bahamas is the place to go. Cat Island in particular has a few small local "resort" hotels. 10-15 rooms/bungelos on a beach in a small community with fresh seafood and no souvenir key chain to even consider.
Around the parameter of the of the festival zone a dozen food booths smoked and sizzled with the aromas of fish, lobster, conch and crab. I visited Flora and got a container of pan friend crab meat and rice. It was so much crab. Below is a man making the famous Bahamian conch salad. There will always be a man making conch salad. And for good reason, it's delicious.
At this point it was early June and we were planning our route back to Florida. We left Cat Island and raised sail for Nassau (approx 24 hours away) the day after the festival. Nassau was intended to be a quick one night stop en route home, but things didn't exactly go to plan.
Every year Bahamians come from all reaches of the islands to enjoy five days of food, drink, music and traditional Bahamian wooden sloop racing. The National Family Island Regatta is the largest regatta in the country. There are five classes of Bahamian sloops, A class – E class. "A" class being the largest boats, and E class the smallest. There are three races each day of the festival. C, D, and E
classes race against each other in the morning, B class races around noon, then
A class in the late afternoon.
There are many vantage points from which to view the races. The best views are no doubt had by those following the action up close in a dinghy or motor boat.
Raceboats fill the anchorages of
Georgetown, where you can see the teams prepare their boats and
head to the start line.
Starting line for a B class race.
E and D class
Downtown Georgetown Straw Market.
Along the waterfront temporary plywood shacks serve food and drink all day and keep the party going into the night. Cracked conch, cracked lobster, conch fritters, steamed mutton, fish stew, souse, pan fried snapper, grouper, BBQ ribs, and fried chicken are among menu items filling the streets with hunger-inducing aromas.
The winner for best drink stand name goes to:
On the last day of the regatta crowds of people lined the street to see the snazzy Police Marching Band play jazzy tunes.
I've known about the traditional Bahamian sloop racing for decades now. Since building wooden dinghies as a teen with my father, I've wanted to see hand built wooden boats racing. We made it to Georgetown in time to catch the 63rd National Family Island Regatta, the largest Bahamian sloop regatta in the country. Nearly 100 handbuilt wooden boats from all reaches of the islands arrive in Georgetown harbor to take measure of both boat and crew.
Bahamian sloops have only recently
received a rulebook dictating their shape. Until the last few years,
there was a gentleman's understanding among the builder's and sailors
of what makes a Bahamian sloop what it is.
The boats are entirely wooden, built of
carvel planks over sawn frame members with flat decks and open cockpits. Many of the "sawn frames" are tree roots and branches whose curve already closely matches the hull shape and they only receive final shaping on one edge. The boats must be owned,
designed, built, and crewed by Bahamians, and all repair or
modifications must be done by Bahamians, in a Bahamian boatyard.
Most boats are built by an experienced Bahamian builder who fairs the
frames with hand tools by eye to his desired shape while they are
upright on the keel backbone. Then the frame edges are measured so
plank tapers can be calculated and laid out on the planks. Two years ago I blogged about my visit to Andros, I met with Bullah Murphy, a boatbuilder who showed me the building method hands on.
Examples of the open cockpits showing "sawn frames"/Ribs
Their shape is dictated by an
understanding that the boat should be relatively easily planked, and
will be built upright on a single keel member. Thus they have a full
length shallow keel with a deep forefoot, wineglass-shaped transom
and cross sections, slight rake in the stem and stern, and a transom
hung rudder.
The beam has limits around 1/3 of the length, and the transom likewise is limited
between ½ and ¾ beam measurement. A limit on depth of draft is not
specified, but there are limits on the depth of deadwood allowed
below the last hull plank. It is generally understood that the boats
are internally ballasted, filling the deep vee of the hull with
steel, stone, or concrete, but the recently published rules now allow
external ballast set in the deadwood, though I didn't see any examples. There are five boat classes based on a length-on-deck measurement that range from 28 foot long “A” class to 11 foot long “E” class
Southern Cross is an A Class sloop that we saw being prepared last month on the government docks in Nassau.
Queen Drucilla is a B Class sloop we found on Arawak Cay in Nassau
Palm Cay Princess is an A Class sloop that was sitting next to Queen Drucilla in Nassau
Lady Eunice, a B Class sloop, is one of the finest examples of the breed, shown here about to be shipped home after the Regatta
This is Georgetown's city park decoration. A highly developed hull for a C Class cat-rigged boat. At only 15 feet long, this boat really shows the hull shape commitment even in the smaller boat classes.
And Old Faithful, an 11 foot long E class cat-rigged boat showing fewer curves and sharper angles common to the smallest boat classes
Sails cannot be synthetic. They are to
be made of Egyptian cotton and the mainsail must have a large curved headboard. There are no winches and no camcleats. All spars
must be wooden, and there are no spreaders allowed on the masts, no
luff tension devices (vangs and cunninghams) and no wire luffs,
however sailtrack has replaced mast lacing on the luff of the
mainsail. Bowsprits and spinnakers are not allowed.
Those were the few written rules about
the rig, but the obvious understanding is that the monstrous mainsail
will be set on an incredibly long mast stepped in the first third of
the hull and will be loose footed, with a pronounced dropping overlap
below an obscenely long boom. The boom is tacked to the base of the
mast and measures 120% or more longer than the entire boat. When tacked to
the mast, the boom extends beyond the transom by almost another boat length.
Wing and wing
Head sails are only seen in A and B
class. C, D and E are considered “dinghy” classes and are cat-rigged, with just the mainsail.
The A and B class sloop rigs feature
a small 3/4 height overlapping jibs tacked to the stem that demand no
running backstays. A and B boats carry a small pole for rigging the
jib wing-and wing when running downwind. Total sail area is not
mentioned, but seemed relatively uniform, probably based on the
experience of maximum sail area that can be carried with a given
number of sailors out on the pryboards.
Pryboards: one of the most unique
features of Bahamian Sloops. It seems nearly impossible to fly such
massive sail area on so small a hull, but here is how they do it: 90%
water ballast. At eight pounds per gallon, water makes somewhat
mediocre ballast, but when a waterbag can move itself about with the
remaining 10%, it becomes active ballast, something that modern
carbon fiber racing monohulls have only recently been achieving with
tilting bulb keels and active side tanks to alter righting moment.
Get that ballast out of the boat and even out over the water, and you
have the most modern high performance active ballast system known to
man, truly this is state of the art: Heavy men sitting on planks. According to the rules, A, B, C and D class boats are allowed pryboards; E class just wishes they had pry boards. Not much else is said about it, except that almost the entire remainder of this rulebook is dedicated to describing protocol for boats retrieving crew members from the water during racing... such coverage bias is probably needed when in one sentence, you set the crew flying on unlimited planks.
In A class, that means ten crew members available for sacrifice, in B class, six. C and D classes can spare four and two crew for the boards respectively
My favorite part of Bahamian sloop
racing is the start. In a strong nod to their working boat heritage
the boats start lined up at anchor. The first leg is always upwind
so that the boats can drop anchor 50 feet or so in front of the
starting line and fall back on their anchor to get their bows on the
startline for the race. At the cannon, crews weigh anchor as fast as
possible while simultaneously hoisting the mainsail. All boats must
start on the port tack except the lead boat who can start on either
port or starboard. I prefer the Bahamian style start, with a rush of
crew hauling rope at the gun, rather than international sail
competitions where there is five minutes of intense tactical close
sailing and jockeying for position behind the line in preparation for
the start. Some hardy crews in the middle of the field can haul
anchor faster and get the holeshot to the port tack in front of the
other boats.
Video of the start of a B class race, 63rd Island Regatta 2016
