April 3, 2010.

Yesterday I had to make a couple of repairs to the foot of our mainsail. The clew of our mainsail is attached to a slug in the boom via a piece of webbing. Unfortunately, I think that the sun finally degraded the webbing so much that it failed. When the webbing broke it allowed the power in the sail to be transferred to the plastic slugs which attach the foot of the sail to the boom. That increased pressure resulted in a pair of broken plastic slugs.

I had a piece of webbing so I replaced the old one by sewing the new one into place. Now that the clew attachment was as good as new I needed to replace the 2 broken sail slugs. Unfortunately, the sail slugs are not in our spare parts inventory so I had to improvise. What I came up with was bending a pair of Bahamanian dimes at right angles. They’re quite large and when put back to back with a third dime in between they were exactly the right thickness. Some drilled holes, a pop rivet and we were back in business. Besides, whens the last time anything on the boat only cost you thirty cents?

After that we headed over to Solitaire for a bit of pre-gaming before heading into town for the big Homecoming celebration. There were more than a thousand people already in town milling about when we arrived at dusk. We bought some food from a couple of the local vendors. Then I waited so long in the beer line that once I finally reached the front I bought several and filled my pockets with them so I wouldn’t have to get back in line for a while. With the food and beverages squared away we found a spot down front and settled in to watch the evenings entertainment. There was a DJ playing just about everything. Who knew there was an island rap version of the electric slide?

There was a youth fashion show put on by the local talent agency followed by 2 live bands. There was some lunatic prancing through the crowd tossing candy and dollar bills up in the air. He drove the kids crazy as he wove through the crowd. Kinda like the Pied Piper of Mayhem. There was also a young girl from the area that performed a couple of songs for the crowd. She was a girl of about 14 and when the music started I found myself expecting a pleasant ballad. When I flipped on my Bahamanian to English translator I realized that the chorus of the song was “I’ll bust the windows out your car”. Ah, young love.

And then we danced…..for hours. Dr. Bob on Savage Son danced to the point where he was practically lame when he awoke this morning. Physician heal thyself. There may have been excessive dancing. After the beers in my pockets were gone I was fed more by well meaning friends. When I awoke this morning I was just happy that my head still fit through the companionway. It was a grand evening which is obviously the reason we didn’t get home until after 0100. Which by the way, is the latest we have been out and about in years!

The guy on the left in the photo is Rick from C Language. He and I are about the best of all the spear fishing cruisers that I’ve met. The guy in the middle of this picture is our friend Norm. Norm makes me feel like a beginner. Norm is a very pleasant unassuming guy that you would never bet a nickel on in a foot race. But give him a spear and a pair of flippers and he becomes a serial killer par excellence. In 10 minutes he can grid search a hundred square yards and kill every Lobster, Grouper and Hogfish in the area. I consider the three of us to be the most capable old white guys with spears in the Bahamas.

I wonder if the Bahamanians were aware that 3 such dangerous individuals were going to be in the area or if they always patrol Homecoming with Uzi’s draped around their necks.