By Kevin

The days leading up to 5F Festival were used by Terry Bain and the other organizers (ok, only Terry) recruit volunteers from the cruising community to host games and contests for the bulk of the cruisers who would be arriving for the Friday and Saturday event. We tended to congregate at both Ocean Cabin or the Farmers Cay Yacht Club for sundowners and conversation. We even did a group rendition of “The Little Farmers Cay” song one night, taught to us by Terry and his wife.

The actual festival saw about 50-60 cruising boats in attendance. Interestingly, the vast majority were sailboats, with only about 10 motorboats. I think this is a reflection of the fact that Little Farmers Cay is pretty far south down the Exumas island chain. The farther down you get, the farther you get from boatyard facilities that can come out and tow you home if you break down. Whereas sailboats can always get home unless their mast or rigging fails.

During the festival we met more kid boats than the rest of the trip combined: S/V La Marou, S/V Prana, S/V Pour Dos, S/V Field Trip and S/V Bay Tripper. Prana was anchored next to us and the crew included a ten year old boy named Parker. Parker and his parents were from Idaho, where they ran a restaurant. The family took long, annual adventure vacations together and were planning to be out in the Bahamas for 2-3 months.

Zach had some good times with his friend Parker. We took him spearfishing with us off a few coral heads, where he almost caught a lobster and a grouper. Later, we went caving with his family and a few others.

There were two big highlights of the 5F festival. The first was the hermit crab race, where our pet hermit crab Joey came in last place, but did beat up one of the other contestants.

The second highlight of the festival was the sailing regatta. Nine local bahamian sloops competed in races over two days. On day one, one of the boats capsized and sank, though the 5 crewmembers were rescued. The second day another of the sloops was rammed and also sunk, this time injuring the leg of one of the sailors. They take their sailing seriously and spend a lot of time and money perfecting their beautiful, homebuilt boats for competition.