Blue Heaven Rendezvous: The Rigors of Regatta- It’s Like Work!

Regatta theme is "Cruisers Gone Wild!"

Registration for the many two weeks of events.

We won !

Monday of Regatta started with yoga on the beach, then helped with selling regatta wares while registration and sign-ups for the various activities took place. Al was in charge of signing up for the few activities we were participating in, along with our other team mates for an activity or two. They also had drawings every so often and we won a one night stay at a marina in Fort Pierce, FL!

Helen steering the big catamaran.

After lunch we went on the catamaran Dejavu to the end
of Elizabeth Harbor to Fowl Cay to snorkel. There was quite a lot of vegetation on the coral beds such as fans and such, as well a nice variety of fish. Unfortunately, I had not received my new underwater camera yet so did not get any pictures. I would have loved to gotten the schools of Sergeant Majors we swam through.

And the band played on!

Tuesday morning Al had conch horn practice for the opening night show which was in the evening. The theme this year is “Cruisers Gone Wild.” There were various short skits, a fiddler, singers, and guitarists. And then there was the conch horn band and conch blowing contest. Al would have won if it weren’t for some twenty-something guy who blew it for 40.6 seconds to Al’s 33 seconds. Oh well, we can hope there aren’t any young guys next time. Met up with many friends on the beach who came back for regatta and danced the night away. It was a great opening night.

One day I tried “water walk” in the afternoon. What that is, is walking in about 1 ½ ft. of water off the beach for a long way. It is a great work out for the legs. Unfortunately, too many other activities have come up and I haven’t had a chance to do it again.

Enjoying the Poker Run at Palm Bay

After yoga in the morning, we participated with about 45 other dinghies in the Poker Run. That consisted of going to five different spots in the harbor, all restaurants/bars to pick a card from the deck before enjoying a drink or appetizer for a nominal fee or free at each place. Then you rendezvous on volleyball beach to hand in your cards and the winners are the 3 best poker hands. We had one pair, so no win for us. Someone had a flush which was top prize. It was fun meeting fellow cruisers at each spot and chatting awhile. But it was a fairly windy day, so my back suffered a little from crossing the harbor twice in the bumpy waves. Ibuprofen was taken that night!

We decided to take a break from regatta and rent a car with Prue and Bert on Exuberant to explore Great and Little Exuma. We headed north to show them what is up there even though we had been there before, because they had not.

This is the bed in the old man's cave.

We showed them the statue of Pompey, the jail and cave that we had seen a few weeks before on our bus tour. We did see three tombs from the 1800’s near Moss Town called the Hermitage which had not been on the tour.

Hermitage tombs.

Then we headed south of George Town where we had never been before.

The well-known Santana's Beach Grill

We went down to Williams Town to have lunch at Santana’s, a great Bahamian style beach bar with excellent food. The rave reviews on the internet were right on.


Enjoying a drink and lunch at Santana	's

Mom at Mom's Bakery

Next door was Mom’s Bakery. She is famous on the island for her baked goods for years. We actually met Mom and had to buy some goodies from her.

Afterwards we went to the very end of the island that just ends in a tiny dock area.

The Salt Marker

On the way north we stopped at the Salt Marker which was to guide the ships into the area so that salt from the salt ponds could be loaded and taken to Europe when a war was on and they could not get salt over there due to an embargo. Unfortunately, once the war was over, basically so was the use of the salt ponds in the Bahamas. On one side of the road were the salt ponds which had a brownish red color and foam from them blew across the road looking like snow. On the other side of the road were the beautiful views of the sound.

There were a few cotton plants nearby.

We saw the ruins of a plantation which had grown cotton and a huge tomb that looked like a big bed which could have been the one that theWilder's book Wind from the Carolinas was based on. It is a great book to understand the Bahamian history and people and I recommend it.

Strange tomb! What better final resting place than a bed!

Then a little further north we went to the beautiful Tropic of Cancer beach where the Tropic of Cancer passes through and where we heard that parts of the Johnny Depp movie Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed.

We headed back to George Town and completed the day buying some groceries and hauling some water to Blue Heaven. Then at night we had the great experience of seeing the space station go right over the George Town area and harbor around 7PM at night. It was amazing how fast it went and was quite a site to see!

The team for Coconut Challenge

Friday was the big day for our favorite regatta activity, the Coconut Challenge. Al was on a team of four. Tom from Suncat, and Steve and Maryann from Living Well made up the team.

The first part of the challenge is the committee dumps 1000 coconuts into a cove called the Fruit Bowl. The contestants are in a dinghy with no propulsion except flippers and they must gather as many coconuts as they can. It is over when all the coconuts have been collected. Our guys did not do too badly with 69 coconuts but the largest amount collected by a team was 129!

Look at the style for collecting!

69 coconuts collected!

The next event was where the team stands behind a line and tossed all at the same time, two coconuts over the volleyball net into a target area to earn various points. Our guys and gal, whom we named “Three Roosters and a Chick”, did quite well.

Look at the great form on the Coconut Toss

The results of the toss.

Then the last event was two people with helmets on their heads, who were Al and Tom, and a garbage bag between them stood at one end.

Maryann was a great tosser!

The other two on the team at the other end had a supply of coconuts. Steve handed the coconuts to Maryann who stood backwards and tossed them to Al and Tom to catch in the bag for a time of 30 seconds. Maryann who was a physical education teacher was phenomenal, aiming almost right for the bag! They got 16 coconuts in.

How did they do overall? They were tied for first place, so had to do a target throw again and ended up in second place.