If Jerris Miller and Kem Jackson have their way, Cayman catboats will once again dot the waters around George Town. Thanks to a large donation from the Dart Foundation, their dream is one step closer to reality.
Last week, the Dart Foundation agreed to a support package worth $175,000, which includes a $100,000 cash grant and a three-year events sponsorship deal worth $25,000 annually.
Mr. Miller, the president of The Cayman Catboat Club, said the grant money would be used for several initiatives, including the completion of refurbishment work on the 24-foot Whittaker Cat.
“The boat is being sponsored for educational programmes… and covers all the costs for this boat for the next three years,” he said. “More importantly, [the grant] allows us to replenish funds into our building fund that we used to get [the Whittaker Cat].”
The Catboat Club’s building at Whitehall Bay on Harbour Drive in Georgetown was heavily damaged during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Since that time, the club has been trying to renovate the clubhouse to create a multipurpose, two-storey building that will feature a ground-floor workshop, a second-floor museum and a patio area for meetings and events.
The grant from the Dart Foundation covers the expenses already incurred for the purchase and refurbishment work to date on the Whittaker Cat, which was built in 1962 and originally belonged to Linton Whittaker.
“It was one of the biggest catboats ever in the Cayman Islands,” Mr. Miller said, adding that the Whittaker Cat had been converted to accommodate an outboard engine and then also clad in fibreglass.
Because catboats were primarily working boats, they lost much of their usefulness with the advent of paved roads and motorised vehicles. Mr. Miller said that as much as he thought putting an outboard engine on a catboat was sacrilege, doing so helped preserve many old catboats because with an engine, they still had a use. He said most of the ones that didn’t get engines sat in someone’s yard and simply rotted away.
Mr. Jackson, a master boat builder, returned the Whittaker Cat to its original design and rigged it back for sails. The work on the boat isn’t quite finished, but is expected to be soon.
Once completed, the Whittaker Cat will be used for periodic racing and for taking children out to teach them about an important part of their maritime heritage.
“It’s a huge boat… and can get 10 to 15 kids in it with no problem,” Mr. Miller said. “It is much, much more stable than the smaller catboats. This boat is really ideal to take kids out and teach them to sail, and better to teach adults as well.”
Dart Enterprises Ltd. CEO Mark VanDevelde said the educational component to the Catboat Club’s efforts made it a good fit for one of Dart’s charitable donations.
“Bringing [catboat education] to school kids is imperative to sustaining a key aspect of Caymanian culture,” he said, adding that actually riding in a catboat would provide an educational opportunity that was different than just reading about catboats or looking at photographs.
Catboats first started appearing in Cayman in the early 1900s. Mr. Miller said that in their heyday, there were at least 150 of them on Grand Cayman, and that for traditional races like the Easter Regatta, there would sometimes be 30 to 40 of them out on the water in George Town Harbour.
Catboats were also used extensively for turtling, fish pot collecting and transportation before automobiles became common place in Cayman.
Because they were entirely made of wood – local pop-nut for the ribs and cypress from Mobile, Alabama, for the planking – the boats were unsinkable.
“A good thing about a catboat is that it does not turn bottom up,” Mr. Jackson said.
The Catboat Club has seven functional catboats, down from 13 before Hurricane Ivan. Five were lost in the hurricane and one other one was sold and is on display near Guy Harvey’s. Mr. Miller said that once the new building is completed and the workshop opened, the club’s focus will switch from refurbishing old catboats to building new ones.
“We’d like to build a complete sailing fleet,” he said.
The Catboat Club will also have to teach more people to sail the catboats.
“They’re very difficult to sail,” Mr. Miller said, adding that there are only about two dozen people in Cayman who can sail them right now.
Camana Bay Town Centre Manager Ken Hydes, an employee of Dart Enterprises but also a supporter of the Catboat Club, said he was delighted to see such a symbol of Cayman’s heritage included in the line-up of events at Camana Bay. Although the race series of events will take place off of Camana Bay’s beach properties, other catboat events will take place in the Camana Bay Harbour, he said.
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