2011-12-31 - in George Town, Exumas

Cruisers fireworks!

Well it is the final year of 2011 - it has been great! Tonight the cruisers got permission to run a party at the Chat 'n Chill bar on the beach.  A lot of cruisers showed up and enjoyed the last few hours of the year.  The funny thing was that we celebrated 'cruisers new year' at 10:00pm as most cruisers probably wouldn't have been able to tolerate the midnight tradition.  To commemorate the New Year the cruisers pooled together their expired flares and got permission for a couple of people to fire them off in a controlled fashion in the harbour.  The interesting thing was that most of the flares didn't really go off.  It was a bit of a shock to me.  All flares have an expiry date and you need current flares to stay in the good books of the coast guard.  I assumed that they would still work and the expiry date didn't have too much effect on efficacy.  Well, like I said some didn't even fire and one of them actually burned through the handle and hurt one of the organizers.  In the cruisers net in the morning, they gave a report of all of the types of flares and which ones typically were fine after the expiry and some that failed that were newer or had just expired.  After the flare demonstration....the party fizzled out and the dinghies made their way home in the dark.  I figured I would stay up until midnight as it just didn't seem right to miss out on the year transition.  By 11:45 I found myself laying in bed as I too was fizzling out.  By 11:50 - both eyes were dimming....by 11:55...probably asleep as I didn't remember seeing that time.  I tried, but after all, I am a cruiser and they don't make cruisers new year for nothing.  Happy New Year!