Every Easter Sunday there is a Crazy Craft Race at Lower Bay, Bequia. A crazy craft is anything that floats but a boat. Come early, they are also judged on the beach before the race. The Sand Sculpture Contest, on the same beach, with mermaids, nesting turtles, smoking volcanoes, even sandcastles, makes it even more fun.
My first crazy craft, Hopefully, was a defunct air mattress sliced open on one side and spread over a bamboo framework. The bamboo was about a finger’s diameter so it would bend and so that the ends could be joined together with pieces of old garden hose. Lots of small stuff (light rope and string) was also used. The air mattress was a deluxe version, covered with a fabric that I pulled off of it to make the sail. Months of planning Hopefully came up with all sorts of nifty ideas that collapsed or otherwise went adrift during sea trials. Dreams of a crazy craft that would work like a boat (and even better!) sank to hopes of a vessel that could complete the racecourse, which is a quarter mile downwind run. We capsized a hundred meters into the race.
This year, ’02, we’re back again, same air mattress and sail. The structure will be palm fronds found on the ground. A rectangular envelope nearly the size of the air mattress, as a stiffening liner, is made by laying fronds side-by-side, overlapping, then crudely weaving them together. This envelope is spread open using the heavy bases of the fronds as ribs and thwarts.
Time for a float test. I’m building this on the beach in the shade where Willy crafts little whales and dolphins for the tourists. Two cruise ships have been putting passengers on the beach so there are plenty of witnesses. Some of them wave and cheer as I gingerly climb aboard and begin to paddle out with my hands. Then the half-expected happens, I capsize. The tourists try not to notice as I lug the dripping thing back to its building site in the shade. But I am smiling – things have been learned. A crucial decision is now made, to add an outrigger, also a board to act as a floor and to tie the ribs together. Several weak spots are reinforced. A spare dinghy spar and boathook will hold the outrigger, a plastic bag full of packing peanuts. A mop handle for the mast, a length of PVC as the sail’s yard... or boom, I haven’t quite figured out her rig yet. A branch with a board tied across a fork will be the steering paddle.
The second float test proves the outrigger.
All this has been going on for more than a week beside Willy’s craft display and soft drink cooler. Many people have stopped to look. Most gaze quietly, perhaps wondering what, if anything, to say or ask about a two-and-a-half by six-and-a-half foot palm frond purse of remarkably crude workmanship. Sometimes it was lying flat, sometimes propped up and propped open, sometimes I was inside. Sometimes it looked vaguely like a boat. Not knowing about the air mattress (which appeared only for float tests) it would be ludicrous for them to assume that I intended this thing to float... or maybe I did. Assuming the question, I might ask if they’d heard about the Crazy Craft Race on Sunday. It was great fun. Even the skeptics wished me well.
Race Day. Time is running out. I’m ashore early, still finishing up. I arrange with a watertaxi to carry us to Lower Bay – setting a time half an hour early, just in case. When the watertaxi doesn’t show, I balance Back Again across my narrow dinghy, Fran, and start paddling. I reckon Back Again’s windage at about half of Fran’s usual sail area, so perhaps this is where all the well-wishing helps – we reach without gusts. Ya mon.
One other crazy craft is already there, Dudley with Don’t Think, a cardboard box raft in the form of a letter “T” – extra bold, sans serif. Another crazy craft, Smile, appears, also a raft. Stan, the Commodore, dons tails and a, uh, top hat? At the last minute, a fourth entry, Last Minute, arrives. “12:02 precisely,” the designated starting time, occurs at about a quarter past – island time is like a displacement hull – It only goes so fast. But it can also go slower.
Then it happens, we are off. Well, off the beach, anyway, drifting around trying to sail as we wait for puffs of wind to take us out from under the point. In short order, Don’t Think and Back Again foul outriggers. The outriggers being at the unreachable extremes of our frail craft, we have to clear each other by maneuvering… or did we finally just drift apart despite our efforts? Then Don’t Think speeds off. Well, they’re getting ahead of us, anyway. Back Again started the race under reduced sail. I take down the mast, make a change, and put it back up with the sail doubled in size. And, yes, increasing sail because of lulls under the point sounds like faulty seamanship to me. But we’re racing, you know – well, sort of.
Don’t Think is getting low in the water and slowing. By the time they are dead in the water we are going fast enough to pass them. The expressions of people aboard a sinking vessel are a moving sight.
Back Again was an air mattress skin over a palm frond structure. The sail material came off the air mattress. The outrigger float was a bag of packing peanuts. Spars and poles came from wherever. Willy's mother made my hat. (photo by Zenon)
We press on. Half the course still lies before us. Back Again needs two hands for the sail, one or more hands for the tiller, and an occasional hand for the bailer. I somewhat work out how to kind of sail with one hand and sort of steer with the other. Being fairly occupied with our own situation, I’ve lost track of the others.
It is difficult to judge the lay of the finish line. Are we there yet? I press on. Finally, a horn is heard over the beach noise. We finished!
“You won!” says a guy rowing an old Avon Redcrest, who has been taking our picture (Zenon – his post cards are all over).
Oh, my! I hope there’s more competition in ’03!
Caribbean Compass '03