The Long Island Rally

By Capt. Scott Buckley

The Long Island Rally

There was a lot of interest in joining the Long Island rally from Georgetown but the weather was not cooperating.  The decision was made to move the departure date from Georgetown up a couple of days and forgo the racing along the way because the winds were on the nose and many of the passages too narrow to tack a bunch of boats through.  More than 80 boats had signed up.
On rally day only 41 boats remained and only 35 made it all the way to Long Island.  I caught a barracuda in route.
 
There were rallies and parties on the beach at the Long Island Regatta center and a race planned for the next day.
  We crossed the tropic of cancer and had a little celebration on SV Kooky Dance.
 
We finally arrived on Thompson Bay Long Island at about 3PM the same afternoon.
I entered the dinghy in the race and won the dinghy class.  The waves were pretty big for the dinghy and I had to keep stopping to bail the boat out during the race.  It was even announced  that I was bailing as I crossed the finish line. 

Part of the rally was dinner in a cave.  At the time it seemed like a wonderful adventure but all it really was was a dinner in a cave and once it was over did not sound so wonderful.  It was expensive and not at all pleasant.  It was smelly, difficult and very dirty.

The next day we rented a car and toured around Long Island.  We went thru the town of Buckley and had to get a picture.
We saw allot of beautiful coast.
We explored some ruins.

The highlight for me was Dean’s Blue Hole.  At 663 feet, the deepest in the world.  
We headed north from Thompson Bay to anchor down at Hog Cay at the very north end of Long Island.  We planned to make a passage the next day to Cat Island.