Spontoon Island
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Capt. Gary's Log

a record of events and memories
sailing along with the Sloop, RED WOLF
transcribed and edited by Wm. Van Ness

PINEAPPLE PRINCESS
By Wm. Van Ness

Log of Sloop RED WOLF
7/15/30

Noon. Secure on double hooks beyond the surf line, aprox. 100 yds off of central beach.  Passengers: 3 village priestesses.
Cargo: 3 surf boards and one small keg of nails.

    You won’t find the Plantation Bay Pineapple Festival in any Spontoon Island tourist brochures.  Should some tourist have somehow heard of it and asked any registered guides or someone at any of the tourist information booths, they’d be told it was just a rural fair that some small villages on Main Island used to hold to see who’d grown the biggest pineapple that year.  Nothing really interesting & maybe it isn’t even held anymore.  The Spontoon Island Tourist Board for sure wishes it wasn’t held anymore!

    Way back when the British Empire had an interest in these Islands, someone got the bright idea of establishing pineapple plantations here.  The three largest were located around the deep bay at the southern tip of Main Island.  One each on the East & West shores of the bay, & one towards its center. Each plantation imported a work force from a different county in Ireland, with the idea that competition between the different Irish clans would improve the production of Pineapples.  The British are long gone,  but the old plantations are still the Island’s largest growers of quality pineapples. Only now each of the old villages runs its plantation for itself.  The villagers, descendants of the original Irish workers, have long since settled into a thoroughly Polynesian culture and lifestyle.  However, where intervillage competition is concerned, they have still retained a Celtic combativeness at odds with the overall easygoing Spontoonie outlook.  All quite good-natured, actually, except at the annual Plantation Bay Pineapple Festival, when all of a sudden it becomes quite serious!  Because this is when the annual Pineapple Princess is selected!

    For the festival, each village selects it’s likeliest young Wahine who compete in a number of traditional events, with the overall winner announced as that year’s Pineapple Princess & the winning village gains almost insufferable bragging rights over the other two!

    The use of priestesses from other islands as judges, and an ever increasing presence by the Spontoon Constabulary, keeps serious violence to a minimum these days.  A few dozen bloody snouts, along with the usual sore heads, black eyes, etc.  On the other hand, as there is a strong tradition of “anything goes in a good fight”, it no longer elicits comment that the contestants routinely dust down their costumes with flea powder before putting them on, or that the hula grounds are given a once-over with some mine detectors left from the Great War in case some tacks or other sharp objects “accidentally” fell there.
   
    This year’s festival had actually been rather calm, if you don’t count the food fight that erupted when the West Village’s entry in the cooking event of Pineapple Poi was selected over the East Village’s Pineapple Stuffed Land Crab.
 
    My own part in the festivities was thankfully a small one & at a safe distance.  The final event was based upon the old Polynesian custom of “swimming out to the ships”.  From a starting mark on the beach, each contestant would run down to the bay and, while carrying a large pineapple, swim out to a Euro-style sailboat.  Climbing on board they’d exchange their pineapple for the traditional token of an iron nail.  Then, taking a surfboard from the deck, they’d ride the waves back to the beach where the first Wahine across the finish line with her nail won.  I’d agreed to let the Festival use my Red Wolf for this year’s boat. There had been some talk among the organizers of including some traditional shipboard activities in the event too, but I had pointed out that, if they really wanted to follow the ancient traditions, it would require both a bigger boat & a lot more sailors than were just then available!  They reluctantly agreed to just having the simple pineapple/nail swap.
 
    The event began well, with the three contestants (all of them Otters, as seemed to be customary for some reason) shedding their costumes “on the run”  before hitting the water with oiled fur & pineapples!  Holding onto the prickly fruits while swimming at full speed would be difficult enough, but then when you add the “accidental” bumping into the other swimmers who were all trying to do the same thing…!  The girls did all make it to the Red Wolf in one piece and with their pineapples.  As each came on board, she handed me (the token “Euro Sailor”) her pineapple, and I gave her a nail from the keg, with the priestesses looking on to see that all was kept on the up & up and the nails delivered in the same order that the girls had come on board in.  Once she had her prize, the girl was free to grab one of the surfboard we had on deck, and begin the race back.

    The sight of the three lovely otter girls riding the high curling waves back to shore was quite pleasant until one of the contestant’s boards got to close to another’s, and both tumbled head over tail into the bay right in the path of the third girl who also ended up taking a short flight to a wet landing!  Now, I’ve seen many a dockside catfight in my time, but they’ve nothing beside an Otter fight in the water!  Eventually, though, the surf landed the three snarling Wahines on the beach, where, remembering the contest, they dashed off to the finish line!  From what I could see through my spyglass, it was a near dead heat, and I was glad I wasn’t one of the judges to decide it.  From what  later learned, though, deciding on a winner was really quit easy.  Two of the girls seem to have lost their nails in the donnybrook, and were disqualified.  The remaining girl, with only some slight embarrassment,  was able to produce her precious token from where, with a little immodest ingenuity, she had safely retained it throughout the fray!  Even the loosing villages, I’m told, joined in the cheering as she was declared that year’s Pineapple Princess!   
 
-G