Little Farmers Cay

Wednesday 2 February – Saturday 6 February

After a nice relaxing ride out in the sound coming in the channel proves to be a little more stressful as we get a few feet off the channel and run hard aground, luckily on a mostly hard sandy bottom with small rocks. Several dinghies come over offering help to pull us off. The tide is coming in pretty quick so we think it might be better to wait a few minutes. But Terry the owner of Ocean Cabin who we had been talking to about a mooring comes out in his skiff and pulls us off with our halyard line from the mast. The confusion coming in was from Terry directing us to go to what he thought was an empty mooring ball, but another boat had taken it without his knowledge, and Steve looking away from the chart to call him back asking again where it was. Terry shows us where to drop the anchor and by 3 we are settled in, a little close to a cat but Terry assures us that we will be okay. Relax a few minutes before heading in to Ocean Cabin, that is full of cruisers already here for the Little Farmers First Friday in February Festival (5 F's celebration). Thursday morning we here on the VHF radio that they will have a book & DVD swap down at Farmers Cay Yacht Club at 12:30, we have several DVD's we have seen and will not want to watch again so go by to swap them out and have some lunch, meeting a couple of other cruisers. We walked to the marina by the east side road so go back via the air strip on the west side. Glad we got here on Wednesday as boats are anchored all around the Island and still coming in. We head over to Ocean Cabin for a meeting about the weekend events, and meet more cruisers. By 4 just as the meeting is ending we meet up with the folks we met up in Black Point, by now the happy hour has started back at the yacht club so everyone heads over there for HH, where we also see Anne & Terry again. Back to the boat at sunset for dinner. Friday the mail boat comes in a little after 8 blasting music through our anchorage announcing their arrival. Steve goes over to the marina to watch them unload, he describes it as organized chaos as two boats, a pickup truck and tons of supplies are moved off the mail boat by crane onto the dock, and from there to shore by the small army of racers and supporters that came on the mail boat with them. The dock isn't quite wide enough for the pickup at the spot where they land it, so they lay down a couple of planks catty corner on the T head to support the left side wheels. The operation of the crane and riggers would be considered wildly unsafe in the US, but they get the job done, and no one is hurt. The supplies unloaded include about a ton of food and alcohol, TVs, air conditioners, giant speakers for a band, generators, bicycles and a baby goat. These people have come to PARTY! They have one race today and with our binoculars we can see them lined up out on the banks. These are small wooden sail boats and they start with their anchor & sails down, then get them both up at the start. As we go ashore Friday afternoon the locals have set up vendor tables and are selling fresh conch salad, shell jewelry, t-shirts, straw baskets, wood carvings and of course alcohol. We work our way up to Ocean Cabin where Steve is talked into participating in the man’s best legs & best buns contests. It was a pretty funny event, he made 3rd runner up in the legs contest but did not make the 1st cut in the buns contest. Meeting more cruisers is really what this event is about, as we meet boaters we have run into before and new cruisers. At 5 we head down to the yacht club marina for HH and open mike jam session where cruisers have brought ashore their musical instruments for entertainment. We have dinner there and head back to the boat in the dark but only a short ride away thru the anchorage. We hear the music from on shore to the early morning hours. Saturday is another beautiful day for the races scheduled, we take it easy in the morning then head over to Oven Rock to meet up with some others to take a walk to a cave on the southern part of Great Guana Cay. The cave goes down about 90' with 2 freshwater pools at the bottom. Back up from the cave we head over to the beach to go for a swim and cool off. Hike back across the Island to our dinghies and head to the pavilion at the airport for the race awards and a cooling beverage. We get entertained by a band from Great Exuma Cay and get to watch a couple of planes land & take off as we are all gathered to the side of the runway. The 5 o’clock dinghy raft-up as been canceled due to the high volume of speed boats in the area of the channel we would have blocked. Head back to the boat after another day of fun & adventure.

link to pictures; https://picasaweb.google.com/103931849054358791487/LittleFarmersCay?feat=directlink