Harbour Island Regatta ( A post from DALLAS)

** I asked Dallas to write this post for his trip to Harbour Island back in October 2013 since he was the one that went and took all the pictures :) So without further ado.....**

Gather round everyone, It's time for a story.  A story about long journeys, personal discovery, and above all, the perfect blend of joy and frustration.

Discovery weekend, October 2013.  The small Island of Harbour Island, North Eleuthera was making its return to hosting a C and B class regatta for the first time in over a decade.  Once one of the most prestigious regattas in the country, Harbour Island began suffering from a drop in funding and eventually could no longer afford to host its own regatta event.  But now they have new people in the ministry of tourism there and things are beginning to turn around.

At this point I have sailed alongside Pat (the boat owners brother) aboard the C class sloop "Two Friends" for 6 months, competing in the Barraterre Festival in May, Black Point in August, and the local fund raiser in George Town in September.  The results had been somewhat mixed, but for the most part we were bringing up the rear.  By this point too I have sunk hours upon hours of my own time and money into the boat to try and improve both its look and performance.

Pat remained indifferent to my efforts.

How these regattas generally work is that the local committee on the particular island hosting the regatta has a certain amount of funds it has raised to spend on paying to bring the racing boats to the island from Nassau, paying the sailors racing a daily food allowance and an overall boat allowance to help cover any costs the boat owners and captains might have.  Then of course there is prize money for usually the first few places.  I found it odd that the boats get paid to race, but they do, and that is why it is generally pretty expensive to host these events.  Because the Harbour Island committee was just restarting this event after a long hiatus there wasn't a lot of money available to bring a large amount of boats.  In fact, they were only allowing 5 C class boats and 4 B class boats.

Because I know space was limited I started contacting people during the summer to see if it was going to be possible for Pat and I to take Two Friends to compete.  I finally managed to track down the person in charge of arranging who got to go and how they got there.  I told him we wanted to go and he told me that if we could get the boat to Nassau from Exuma then "we were all set".  So when someone tells me I am all set for something I assume I can go forward with planning how to make this thing happen.  Frustration.

A few weeks later I contacted the person in charge of the Harbour Island Committee to confirm that we were on the list of boats attending.  We were not.  I called the person in Nassau who assured me we were "all set" and was told that I was disorganized because I did not attend the meeting.

The meeting.

What meeting?

Obviously the meeting I was supposed to know about and somehow attend even though I was in Exuma and not Nassau.  The meeting that by some miracle the people that have been involved in the world of Bahamian Sloop Sailing for years and years always manage to find out about and attend.  Frustration.

As it turns out I realized that I knew who this person in Nassau was and he also knew me.  Once he realized who I was, or more importantly, who my father was, a spot was made available for us and we were officially confirmed for the Harbour Island Regatta.

Now the journey could officially begin.

To get Two Friends from Exuma to Nassau it had to ride on the mailboat.  You only ride the mailboat for two reasons:
1. You are terrified of flying.  or 2. You have absolutely no other choice.

Someone had to ride with Two Friends to make sure everything made it safely, Pat was busy so I rode along for the ride.  To be honest, I was kind of looking forward to the adventure from the beginning of this thing all the way to the end so I was excited.  Luckily the weather was perfect and the sea was glassy calm the whole time.  The boat ride from George Town Exuma to Potters Cay in Nassau took over 15 hours.

I recruited my cousin Ryan to tag along with me to Harbour Island to help crew the boat, and I was meeting him in Nassau during the exchange to our next ferry ride.

Now to find what boat we were supposed to get on to get to Harbour Island.  Of course nobody knew the answer to this seemingly obvious question so we were left with no other option but to simply drive around the dock until we located some sort of Regatta related activity going on. We saw a few other C class boats being loaded onto a ferry, this must be the right place.  We asked around as to when the boat was supposed to leave for Harbour Island.  Again, nobody seemed to know the answer to another pretty important question.

No worries, time to go about getting Two Friends from the ferry from Exuma onboard the ferry to Harbour Island.  Even though she was on a trailer she was still full of lead and weighed a ton, an ordinary car or small truck could not pull her.  Rudy, the owner of the boat brought his truck to help get her onboard.

This was quite an ordeal.

The tides were not right so the ramp onto the new ferry was too steep and we couldn't get the boat up the ramp and over the top and onto the ferry.  At one point Two Friends actually disconnected from the truck and began rolling back down the ramp!  All I could do was watch helplessly. I figured she would barrel into a bunch of nearby containers, but luckily there was a large rope laying down on the ramp and that slowed her down so much she rolled harmlessly to a stop without damaging anything.  Eventually the crew of the ferry used a forklift to drag her onboard.

Now we find out that the boat is not leaving until tomorrow morning.

I spent the night at Ryans' and we got up early to get back to the ferry at 6am.  We both grabbed some tuna and grits from a small shack under paradise island bridge and sat onboard, placing bets on when we would pull out from the dock.  It wasn't too bad though, I think we left shortly after 8 am.

The ride to Harbour Island from Nassau took about 6 hours and was more fun that the ride from George Town because it was in the daytime and the ferry was packed with regatta boats, sailors, and I had my cousin Ryan to keep me company.  At one point the boat had to come very close to shore to avoid the "devils backbone", a string of very shallow reefs along the northern tip of Eleuthera. 

Once we arrive in Harbour Island it was time to get Two Friends in the water and rigged up for the races the next day.  Because we were one of the first ones on the boat we had to wait our turn to be offloaded.  Everything went smoothly and before long we had her rigged up and tucked in for the night.  Now, usually lodging in Harbour Island would have been a problem with most of the hotels and guest houses being booked up a year in advance, but luckily for us I had recently done a sailing lesson in George Town with a lovely couple who lived right on the main street in Harbour Island and they were nice enough to let us stay in their house because they always get out of town once the regatta starts.  Ryan and I checked out the place and then headed out to join the rest of the skippers for the skippers meeting/party.  In hind sight I should have skipped this and just enjoyed the party in town instead.  Pat was at the skippers meeting as well and as was the usual case for Two Friends there was confusion as to who was officially the "captain" of the boat.  I should have just left Pat to deal with collecting the food money for the boat etc but because I had already put so much work into the boat and headed the planning process of getting us here I felt like I had earned the right to at least act the captain for this regatta.  Pat was the face of the boat and I don't think most people there knew who I was or what I was doing there.  Pat was usually pretty laid back and never cared much about being recognized, but this trip was different.  From the start Pat seemed to go out of his way to make sure I knew that this was not my boat, it was his (even though it's his brothers, not his) and no amount of time and energy I put into the boat was ever going to change that. 

The next day was the first day of racing, we were scheduled to race twice and then the final race the following morning.  There were originally 5 C class boats racing: Two Friends, Sweet Island Gal, Thunderbird, Dream Girl, and Jacobs Ladder.  Jacobs ladders' mast broke before the races even started so she was out, leaving four of us to race.  The first race did not go well.  We raced with too much sail and boat was too much to handle.  We got stuck in Irons once and with these boats that is a big deal.  The sail must be dropped so the boat can drift backwards, then the sail is raised again.  it pretty much puts you out of the race.  We finished 3rd out of 4 on the first and second race.  I wouldn't say that I sailed great during those two races, but for some reason Pat was really upset with me and was being more aggressive and verbally abusive than usual.  He must have made outrageous claims to the other men there and then realized that I was not going to help him achieve those claims because I was sailing so poorly.  It was at this point that I finally realized that our relationship was going to quickly come to an end when this regatta was over. I was tired of him and tired of wasting my time and money on this boat.  Because we had no chance of coming anything but 3rd overall we weren't under any pressure for the final race, and it was our best one!  Although we still finished 3rd, we were only about 10 seconds behind second place, who was only about 10 seconds behind first place.  All three boats crossed the finish line within 30 seconds or each other, that's considered a pretty close finish for these boats.  Once we were done Me Ryan and Lindsay (a guy from the Nassau mailboat who agreed to join us) immediately got to work getting Two Friends out of the water to be done with the sailboat for a while. 

Everything went smoothly and we all felt a nice wave of relief when she was all tucked away onboard the ferry to return to Nassau, now all that was left to do was relax and enjoy the festivities and awards ceremonies. 

One of the best highlights for me was when The Prime Minister himself awarded me the third place trophy. 

The ride back to Nassau was a lot quieter than on the way up and most people just tried to find places to sleep for the 6 hour ride. Once we arrived I bid farewell to Pat and headed to the airport for a flight back to Nassau. 

Overall the trip was fun, but it was a lot of work and at the end of it all I never heard a thank you or any appreciation from Pat at all.  I knew after this that our sailing relationship would eventually end,  and I couldn't have been happier.