AJAYA'S CRUISE - Easter festivities enjoyed at Black Point

Easter festivities enjoyed at Black Point

AJAYA'S CRUISE

Phil & Nikki Hoskins

Sun 11 Apr 2010 19:12

Our Easter was enjoyable at Black Point - the local community, second largest in the Exumas did the boaters proud. Good food, especially from the Cook-Out stalls that had been set up along the roadside, offering tasty Bahamian food with all proceeds going to local charities.

The Saturday events finished with a Junkanoo, with the star attraction - 'The Valley Boys' who brought all their costumes and musical instruments down from Nassau to bring the Easter celebrations to a mind (and eardrum) blowing conclusion. The cameras from Nassau were there to capture the excitement and one or two cruisers were interviewed for their thoughts on the festival.

The sporting events were open to all. There was the bottom fishing competition which was won by one of the local families who seem to hook most of the fish swimming in the area of Black Point all by themselves. One of the cruisers that signed up to go fishing turned up at the appointed time of 0700 and his fishing boat and crew arrived at 0930 to collect him. He probably felt this was stretching Bahamian Time to the limit. Unfortunately he caught no fish either! The basketball competition was hotly contested - Black Point V Nassau with most of the Nassau team comprising of members of the Valley Boys Junkanoo outfit. Also hotly contested was the Dominoes competition. Anybody familiar with the way this game is played in the Caribbean will know that the domino being laid has to hit the table with as much force as possible. In fact the tables they were using for this event had very old flaky white paint with pieces flying off in all directions and landing on the players. Great fun to watch.

Easter Sunday afternoon an impromptu cruiser gathering took place with some friends on the local beach. We had to drag the dinghy across the shallow water to actually get to the beach where after a few beers we all had to wade back through the water on a falling tide.

The closing event on Easter Sunday was the prize giving from the various tournaments, although sadly non of the young local winners turned up to accept their trophies. Maybe it wasn't considered 'cool' in front of so many old fogies. A raffle with 1st prize listed on the ticket as "A Roasted Oven" caused excitement and intrigue, although we never got to see the actual oven to ascertain if it had been roasted! Then somebody pointed out that it was a Roasting Oven!

Last, after the trophies and votes of thanks a concert of Gospel music was announced which the cruisers thought would comprise of church gospel songs from a choir, which, even if not of a religious persuasion can be quite melodic and uplifting. It wasn't. This is 2010 and things have changed. We were instead treated to a Bahamas version of 'Craig David' complete with pointy rap "stand up for Jesus" songs. Regrettably most of the cruisers did indeed stand up and then edge away from our seated positions right at the front of the event which was taking place in the open air on the basketball pitch. Once at the back most drifted away to their various boats and the next morning the assembled fleet began to disperse to points north and south.

We decided to return to George Town to re-provision as the general store in Black Point had been besieged and had run out of most things. However, the friendly shopkeeper had finally mastered the new cash register that had been sent from Nassau without any operating instructions. He had still been using his old calculator at the start of the festival which was very frustrating for him!

So, here are some of the pics from our Black Point visit.