We spent New Years Eve dancing at the St Francis Resort on Stocking Island. Most of the cruising sailboats in the harbor were represented there. The next day we dinghied over to the mainland to watch the Bahamian sloops race in their annual New Year’s Day regatta.
Bahamian racing sloop sports a single sail mounted on a mast that is set well forward in the boat. By rule, the sail must be made of canvas. So sail shape is something of a wistful ideal. To go upwind, you just sheet it in tight and hike like hell. The sloops are perhaps 25 feet long The boom is easily as long as the boat, overhanging the transom by several feet. The boats have only a thin wooden keel, and they are dramatically overpowered. Some ballast is usually carried in the way of rocks or scrap iron. The crew uses two long 2×12 pieces of lumber to gain hiking advantage. We saw 3 or 4 crewmembers on each boat perched on these 2×12s, with the outermost crew sitting perhaps 6 feet outside the gunwales of the boat. The boats only race in relatively shallow water. Because when you capsize a Bahamian racing sloop, it goes to the bottom.
The Bahamian sloops begin racing from an anchored position with sails down. At the starting gun, a designated crew member on each boat furiously hauls on the anchor rode, hopefully propelling the boat forward and giving the driver a choice of tacks to begin on. Another unlucky soul hauls away at the main halyard, hoping to get his sail up and pulling sooner than the nearby competitors, who are doing the same thing about 30 feet away. It’s a curious confusion to observe. The wind was a little strong on New Year’s Day, (about 15+ knots) so no boat was able to immediately achieve much forward velocity. One or two had to back the sail and fall off on the desired tack. Watching a boat with no weigh on hollering for rights over a boat that is slowly slipping backwards is probably not a situation you often encounter in the racing rules of sailing. But we saw it happen more than once on New Year’s Day in Georgetown. After the general chaos of the start, something close to normal racing ensued. The course consisted of an upwind leg of about a mile and a half, then two reaching legs back to the starting point. Starboard roundings at every mark. So it was big triangle. Boats went twice around the triangle to complete one race.
As you might expect, no positions changed on the reaching legs. And the winner was well decided on the first half of the first beat. We noticed, however, that the winner’s sail seemed a good two feet higher on the hoist than the sails on the other boats. We’re not sure if there was a protest or a sail measurement controversy after the racing. Probably not. We dinghied back to More Cowbell before the racing was over and spent the evening sipping cocktails with Dave and Nancy, on Liberty – another boat from Texas.
