Catboats set sail to honour maritime heritage

Seven catboats – traditional Caymanian sailing vessels – are expected to take to the North Sound on 31 Oct. for the annual David Foster Memorial Race, celebrating the Islands’ seafaring heritage and the generations of craftsmen who helped preserve it.

Organised by the Cayman Islands Catboat Club, the race will take competitors from Dragon Bay to Bioluminescence Bay, with a skippers’ briefing scheduled for 9am and racing beginning at 10am.

Depending on wind conditions, the journey is expected to take approximately three hours, with crews relying on traditional sailing skills to navigate waters once travelled by generations of Caymanian fishermen, turtlers and traders.

The event is among the club’s longest running races and honours the late David Wade Foster, a founding member of the Cayman Maritime Heritage Foundation and enthusiastic supporter of the Catboat Club, who died in 2005.

Foster, a prominent businessman and former Chamber of Commerce president, was instrumental in supporting efforts to preserve the traditional vessels at a time when their future was increasingly uncertain.

In 2007, the catboat club awarded Foster a posthumous lifetime membership, describing him as an enthusiastic supporter “without whose encouragement and financial assistance the Cayman Catboat Club would have surely foundered.”

Catboat Club President Jerris Miller

also noted that, “Mr. Foster also donated the first catboat to the club, Brac Cat.”

The memorial race, traditionally associated with Foster’s birthday on 24 Aug., has become an enduring tribute to his commitment to preserving Cayman’s maritime traditions.

A vessel that helped build a nation

Long before roads connected Grand Cayman’s districts, the sea provided the principal means of transportation and the Cayman catboat was an essential part of everyday life.

The distinctive double-ended wooden vessels, traditionally painted blue and white, were used for fishing, turtling, carrying supplies, delivering mail and transporting passengers between coastal settlements.

Their shallow draught, manoeuvrability and ability to operate under sail or paddle made them particularly suited to Cayman’s coastal waters.

The design is widely credited to Captain Daniel Jervis of Cayman Brac, who built his first catboat, The Terror, in 1904.

The design subsequently spread throughout the three islands, becoming an indispensable part of Caymanian life.

Catboat racing also developed into a popular pastime, with organised regattas dating back to at least 1935.

However, the expansion of roads, motorised vessels and the decline of the traditional turtling industry eventually threatened both the boats, and the craftsmanship required to build them.

The Cayman Islands Catboat Club, established in 1998, has worked to reverse that decline through restoration, boatbuilding, sailing events and educational programmes.

Miller has been closely involved in those efforts for decades, alongside traditional boatbuilders including Ned Jerris Miller III and Kem Jackson.

Jackson, one of the Islands’ most respected traditional boatbuilders, has played an extraordinary role in preserving Cayman’s catboat heritage, restoring historic vessels and introducing generations of young Caymanians to sailing.

Over many years, he took hundreds of schoolchildren, residents and visitors onto the water aboard traditional catboats, providing firsthand experiences of an important part of Caymanian life that might otherwise have disappeared.

Jackson remains a central figure in the club’s history, having devoted decades to keeping the vessels seaworthy and passing on the skills and knowledge of earlier generations.

Ned Miller has also undertaken extensive work maintaining and repairing traditional boats and helping preserve the historic clubhouse. He studied wooden boatbuilding at the International Yacht Restoration School in Rhode Island, acquiring skills that could help safeguard Caymanian boatbuilding techniques.

Historic clubhouse

The club’s headquarters on North Church Street in George Town is itself an important surviving link to Cayman’s maritime past.

Known historically as Captain Clark’s House, the Pink House and the Whitehall Bay Careening Place, the building is believed to date from the mid-19th century, making it one of George Town’s oldest surviving structures.

The waterfront location was once used for careening schooners: hauling vessels onto their sides to clean, maintain and repair their hulls.

The original building incorporated traditional wattle-and-daub construction, using ironwood posts, wooden framing and lime-based materials.

Severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the building faced demolition before club members successfully campaigned for its preservation.

Its restoration received substantial assistance from Dart. In 2001, the Dart Foundation donated $60,000 towards restoration of the historic property.

A further major contribution followed in 2011, when Dart provided a support package valued at $175,000, including a $100,000 grant and three years of event sponsorship.

Additional assistance from local businesses and building suppliers helped bring the clubhouse back to life, culminating in its reopening in August 2014.

Today, the building represents not simply a meeting place for sailing enthusiasts, but a tangible connection to the shipbuilders and seafarers who helped establish Cayman’s maritime reputation.

Keeping traditional skills alive

Catboat Club member Kenny Ebanks believes preserving the vessels must go beyond occasional races and cultural celebrations.

Ebanks has called for closer partnerships with schools to introduce young Caymanians to traditional boatbuilding, seamanship and maritime history.

“Heritage must be more than a story told at a cultural celebration or a photograph in a museum,” he said. “It must be something our children can see, touch, learn, practise and carry forward.”

He warned that only a handful of craftsmen retain the skills necessary to construct traditional Cayman catboats.

“Our forefathers left us more than boats. They left us an example of ingenuity, perseverance, self-reliance and an intimate understanding of the sea,” he said.