The 5F's

The first Friday in February, Little Farmer’s Cay has a festival – get it – 5F’s. This 5F’s festival started in 1986, so this year is the 25th anniversary. The festival includes sailboat races, among the locals, and lots of other events for the cruisers (best legs and buns contests, wet T-shirt contest, butt darts, raffles, etc) and a plethora of food and drink. Our schedule just happened to work out so that we were in Little Farmer’s Cay during this period. We made the long run of 5 miles from Rudder Cut Cay to Little Farmer’s Cay early Wednesday morning while the tide was still high. There are several places to anchor in the Little Farmer’s/Big Farmer’s/Great Guana Cays area. We ended up in an area between Little Farmer’s and Great Guana Cays close to the Farmer’s Cay Yacht Club. Second Star anchored in Big Harbor which was quite shallow, but they draw less than 3 feet. By the time the festival started, there were probably close to 100 boats in the area – not as many as in George Town – but a sizeable number.

The Little Farmer’s population is very friendly and it wasn’t long before we felt we knew most of the reported 55 residents. We’d met Terry and Earnestine who run Ocean Cabin and Roosevelt Nixon who runs the Yacht Club. We received a personal tour of the area from J.R. who is a woodcarver. He took us for a walk to his woodcarving studio and on the way pointed out all the various trees – along with some very interesting stories. We attended happy hour one night at Ocean Cabin and the next night at the Yacht Club. We explored a large cave on Great Guana Cay and then did some beachcombing on the Sound Side.

In our next post we'll have pictures and comments on the 5F Festival

Before heading out from Rudder Cut Cay, we checked out
the cave close to the anchorage

Looking up at the hole in the cave

The cave wall

We passed through some very shallow water at Jimmy's Cay
(Note to friend Jimmy - Looks like a fixer-upper on the point)

Passing by Musha Cay on the way to Little Farmer's.
There is a very nice resort on the Cay

The Ocean Cabin Restaurant and Bar on Little Farmer's



The restaurant's hours - actually this is pretty typical
of all the islands




Another fun sign at Ocean Cabin



They really like colorful buildings -- even for the post office

The Farmer's Cay Yacht Club

Inside the Yacht Club



Jana, Michael and some locals



The next morning we met J.R., the woodcarver.  He was
a pretty fascinating and informative guy (Sorry, didn't get a picture)

This is an almond tree

The local school

A pair of manatees in the shallow anchorage

Locals collecting conch



Here's the conch catch



Oven Rock - so named because it resembles a Bahamian stone oven
This is where we anchored to go to the cave

Entrance to the cave

Us inside the cave

Exploring the cave

Gerry exploring the pool of water

Stalactites and stalagmites

An old plastic bucket that has become covered with
the drippings from the limestone



The beach on the ocean side after exiting the cave