Location:
Stocking Island, George Town, Bahamas
Position:
N 23 31.647 W075 45.946
It
is an exciting time in George Town. This week is the annual Family
Island Regatta , boat race for the local Bahamian sloops.
Participants, boats and spectators have been arriving for the last
few days. The big mailboats that arrive usually with supplies for the
island have been passing Rachel packed to the gills with racing
sloops built with care and precision in the traditional fashion on
other islands. The town is a hive of activity and anticipation. The
men all boasting about their boats, the women dressed to the nines in
tight clothes and glamorous hairdos. On the water the Bahamian sloops
are setting up and fine tuning their rigs, practicing to make sure
everything is working correctly and making sure the crews are
familiar with the harbor.
We attended this regatta 4 years ago and are excited to be here for it again.
Today was the first day of races and Mark was invited to view them, along with a crowd of folks on one of the cruising boats. The plan was to sail around the harbour following the race and getting the best views possible while drinking beer and having fun. Mark had lots of fun as you can see from the pictures. They managed to really get close to the boats making it an exciting afternoon.
While this was going on Julie was enjoying a relaxing afternoon on Rachel, reading and popping out in the dinghy to watch an occasional race round the mark that was set up, conveniently about a half mile from Rachel. During one of the times of relaxing on the boat a friend, Gail, comes zooming over in her dinghy. She says “Get your bathing suit on and your snorkel. The dolphin's here!” It was not necessary to say more. We'd been waiting for 2 weeks for this to happen. 30 seconds later Julie jumps into the dinghy and off they go. We had seen a dolphin and baby in the harbour and had heard that they would let you swim close to them, but since then we hadn't seen them. Every day we were on the lookout but to no avail. So you see why this was an exciting event. We spent about an hour, cavorting with the mother, we didn't see the baby. We swam so close that we could almost touch her. If we turned and started to swim in a different direction she would turn and follow and then swim up underneath us. Sometimes we would get out of the water onto the boat to get a good view of her from above. But mainly we just took turns being up close and personal.
Awesome
