‘More Race, More Fun in the Carriacou Sun!’ is the slogan of the annual Carriacou Regatta, entering its 45th year in 2010, and primarily the creation of one man, Jamaican-born John Linton Riggs.
Riggs planned to retire to Carriacou in the early 1950s but found himself instead getting involved with the island’s culture and waning boat building industry, which he sought to revitalise and use to help the struggling economy.
Boat building is one of the island’s most important traditions, and Carriacou sloops in particular are very highly regarded throughout the region for their sturdiness and elegance. There is also an aura of derring-do and romance attached to their history, with their speed putting them at an advantage over the customs men who chased them in former times.
There’s an elaborate ceremony surrounding their traditional construction, from selection of the timbers to beach-site building and celebratory launch. The wood is found in the Carriacou forests, and it takes an experienced eye to select to best types for bodies and masts. Expertise in the various aspects of boatbuilding is handed down the generations, and the finished article is not only the embodiment of a great practical tradition that fuses technology and traditional skills, but also a work of art. The exuberant launching testifies to this, as crowds gather from neighbouring islands and the vessel is hauled down the beach using a thick rope around the hull, with logs thrown in front for it to slide over to the accompaniment of loud shouting and singing.
But by the 1950s boat building on Carriacou had fallen into neglect along with the rest of the economy and many other traditions, and Riggs’s creation of a Regatta in 1965, in which skippers and builders could test their skills against each other for cash prizes breathed new life into the industry. Riggs promoted the event across the region and now it includes not only the race itself, between fourteen different classes of workboats, but also sporting and cultural events onshore.
Running from July 26 to August 6, the Carriacou Regatta includes a range of cultural and sporting events and attracts international attention. The Miss Aquaval Queen Show sees contestants from Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada and other islands in the Grenadine archipelago compete in the regional beauty contest. There are also traditional greasy pole and donkey racing contests, along with football and netball competitions.
The festivities coincide with Emancipation Day weekend, when the whole region celebrates its liberation from the blight of slavery, and talented hopefuls pour in from the neighbouring islands of Petite Martinique, Antigua, Bequia and elsewhere to pit their skills against other sailors in different categories of workboats.
For an authentic taste of what the Grenadine islands are all about, don’t miss the Carriacou Regatta, a living embodiment of traditional skills and handicrafts that gets right to the heart of life on these islands. The sheer exuberance and zest for life you see here brings you up close and personal to a people who have overcome numerous privations and repressions to come through smiling and hospitable as ever.
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