Regatta

The Georgetown Cruising Regatta is the apex of the Georgetown cruiser experience. All of the cruisers come together to create this 2 week long celebration, and the ridiculousness of the cruising community is made readily apparent as the days of the regatta unfold. To begin with, in a normal regatta, the races play a pretty large part in the whole thing, and in the races the point is to sail the course the fastest. In this regatta the races are just another event, playing second fiddle to the coconut harvest and maybe the scavenger hunt, and the main focus is not on going fast, they give the best prizes to the people who take the best pictures, cook the best desserts underway, and catch the biggest fish, and the prizes are usually rum or some type of alcoholic beverage. The whole regatta is carried out in this sort of fashion.
Opening night is host to the "No Talent Show" which was a spectacle of folks with seemingly no self restraint going up and making fools out of themselves, from the 70 year old french lady Nicole (the same one who took me out in poker 2 weeks in a row) who is about 100 pounds over weight and has a bust that weighs as much as me going up to do a belly dance in a sheer pink tutu get up with the town madman Hanz in a similar outfit behind her trying to mimic her (surprisingly graceful) moves, to the family of 5 trying to do the evolution of dance, the loads of karaoke, broadway songs, songs with sailing lyrics added, the "Booze Brothers", The California Rasins, the old fat chick who just went up and downed some wine on stage while "Red Red Wine" played, the French guys and their crossdressing, and the parents covering eyes of children when some guy (french of course) wound up in a banana hammock, but, there was one act that displayed an incredible amount of talent. I wrote up a spoof to the cruisers net that goes on every morning in Gtown while I was in Conception, it was the underwater fishing net, hosted by Mike Mahi, with the water (instead of weather) from Franz and his pet catfish whisker 5 (instead of Hanz on his boat whisper 5), a sea dance party from rock fish Ron (instead of Rockin Ron, who throws all the dance parties in Gtown) and it went on like that poking fun at all of the Gtown celebrities, even Mayor Bill on "Rosanante" (in teh fishing net he was Mayor Krill on the shell of loggerhead turtle "Oceanante", daringly casted by Dick of Rio Dulce). Well from the first time we gave our mini presentation in Conception over the radio, the ideas came pouring in from the kids and adults alike for additions to the fishing net. We signed up for the No Talent Show and had a little meeting where everyone presented their ideas and we put them all together with the original script and set up a skit where all the kids and adults on our little group of boats had a part to play. We got up on stage with everyone hiding behind a sheet and me acting as the narrator as they all popped out and made their fishing net announcements, Kari even played an important role as general eye candy/sheet holder, and we closed with the thought for the day from Barnacle Brian: "A wise fish once said: I've got a fever. And the only prescription... is more conch horn" and the famous conch horn orchestra that was lining up to come on after us all blew their horns in salute, it was awesome. The kids had a blast and everyone was in tears laughing by the end of it, it really went over well, people were coming up to me every day afterwards to say how great it was, and insist that we had far too much talent for the no talent show, a couple of the A-list celebs even asked for the script.
So after a smashing opening night the excitement continued with the coconut harvest. They let go 700 coconuts on the other side of the little hole one anchorage and 100 people in teams of 4 raced to their dingheys and using flippers on their hands as oars, paddled across and collected as many coconuts as possible, drenching other boats with buckets, stealing/defending collected coconuts, cheating as much as possible. Me, Kari, Mark, and Gregg, a local kid from St. Francis, ended up in a three way tie for 2nd place and in a tense tie breaker where we tossed coconuts over a volleyball net into circles on the other side, I failed our team miserably and we wound up in a pathetic fourth place. After that madness we went to the Texas Hold'em poker tournament, which I dealt in, and we all got out pretty early, though I did have two students in the top 4 who came to my clinic two days before, and I actually won the week before, a $100 prize, so I was allright with the loss. A bonfire on the beach with a bottle of wine given to me by Fred (which he won for getting the first full house at the table) was a nice way to end the day.
A scavenger hunt the next day with Dwayne and Kim from Zola, Mark, Kari, and a kid J who we just met, was fun, but the ridiculous list of all red items (to fit the Red Hot Nights theme of the regatta) was pretty impossible to fill, most of the items we got were a result of a little creativity and a lot of red sharpie. The winning team was Gregg who lives there, one of his friends, and Whistling Winds (a couple of the A-celebs in the harbor), they won for the 4th year in a row, dang cheaters.
We also helped run the children's day, which my Uncle volunteered bravely to be the chairman of, and we had fun doing a bunch of activities with the (mostly bratty) cruiser kids and the (mostly awesome) local kids from the nearby primary school. We ran around and did relay races and obstacle courses and all kinds of fun stuff, and Cory, who I hear is a mad sick rapper, made us a cheer "We are the orange team, everywhere we go you can hear us scream..." to the tune of Iron Man.
Well after all that madness we were looking to get out of town, start heading home. Kari went to the airport and we were getting ready to go, I was actually cleaning Fred's hull, and he said he heard someone calling me on the radio and it sounded like they said Kari. Turns out she was calling me from a taxi on her way back from the airport because her plane was leaking fuel and her flight was cancelled, so she had to stay another day, poor girl, and we delayed our departure one day. She started on her journey home Tuesday and we got out on Wednesday, though we will be taking a bit longer than her. We will be heading up the ICW by mid April, and if anyone has nothing to do for a month or so, we could use some crew (Alan? eh? summer break? All of you looking for jobs? Nobody is going to hire you, get over it... nawww jj ((that means "just joshing", I kind of like the phrase "just joshing" better than "just kidding" (((jk))) and I think that this whole jj thing could really catch on if it is given the right exposure, my widely read blog is a good start, though it will inevitably be misinterpreted to mean "just joking", which I still like better than "just kidding", but I think that "just joshing" has a more distant interpretation than "just joking" from "just kidding" and is therefore a more necessary addition to the online lingo lexicon))), though I guess you all have lives to live up there in the real world. So, Kari brought me down a laptop, and with a puter of my very own I will be able to email and whatnot more readily, so I hope to hear from you people soon. Have a wonnnnderful day.