Back in the Exumas, Farmer’s Cay celebrates their 5Fs (Farmers First Friday February Festival); this year the Cape Cod Canal celebrated its centennial, so 5Cs. The Morgan’s voyage coincided with this celebration. After bidding farewell to the Morgan, we headed up a few miles to anchor behind Mashnee Island in Phinney’s Harbor. The fireworks barges tied up at the west stakes which was near the canal opposite our location, on the west side of Mashnee. Any closer, we’d be on the barge!

Today was a very chatty day on the VHF since the canal was closing to big ship traffic (65ft plus) at noon and to all ships at 7pm. Even on a normal day canal control reprimands a handful of ships who do not know the rules about hailing canal control before entering the canal. With today’s early closure (due to the fireworks) more than one pissed off big boat had to cool their engines for hours until the canal opened again around 10pm. One guy calls around 6pm, gets the bad news, and ok he has an idea; can he tie up at the west stakes? Well no!

The fireworks were quite spectacular and I’d say five stars except, unlike the Sailfest fireworks off New London/Groton, they were not synchronized to music. The fancy railroad bridge that we could see from where we were and is the only one we need to “worry” about had a fireworks display that was somewhat coordinated with the big show.

Today was another cool-ish day (haven’t seen 80F in the past week) but by show time at 9pm the wind was way down and we sat in our chairs at the stern for the show. Lots of local boats came out but not a remarkable amount and we made sure to be well-lit up at departure time.