Back to Grand Bahama Island or Gran Bajamar as coined by the Spanish meaning "great shallows." The Lucayan indians, Taino's who called themselves Lukku-Cairi referred the island as Bahama.
Over a hundred people came to the island by various means including ferry as shown here, by commercial and private aircraft, by boat and perhaps some even paddled in, not sure about that? Luke, Jose, Sergio, Fide, Jose Sr., Louis and myself make the passage to GBI on the Balearia Bahamas Express.
Dealers were traveling to the 2015 Pryde Group Americas (PGA) Dealer Meeting to learn about and order water gear being bought to market for 2016. Partners have traveled in from numerous countries from throughout the Americas. The brands represented at the meeting included Cabrinha, NP Surf, Imagine Surf, JP-Australia and Neil Pryde. The following logos are linked to the respective websites.
We might have had island homes for digs but the Pryde Group came up with something a bit better appointed. The Grand Lucayan in Port Lucaya on Grand Bahama Island shown below.
The view from the Grand Lucayan hotel was nothing short of astonishing! It was a pleasure to see and shoot sunrises, sunsets and time in between from this marvelous perspective out over the Straits of Florida.
http://www.grandlucayan.com
Many thanks to this great sponsor of the event!
They had the colonial reception building for the Grand Lucayan all decked out in honor of the event.
Kent Marinkovic, President of Pryde Group Americas and Patrick Pender, CEO of the Pryde Group based in Hong Kong get things moving the first night of the dealer meeting.
Nice infinity pools complete with primo water toys. There were several such pools on the Grand Lucayan Resort grounds. PGA figuring one Kent wasn't enough, managed to cater two Markinovics to keep things fun and lively.
A theme of the meeting is "bootlegging" or the largely past practice of smuggling prohibited alcohol past authorities in sometimes creative and picturesque ways. This painting conveys a sense of evasion and tense times evoked by the boozy days of prohibition. The Bahamas was a convenient transshipping point for contraband hooch brought in from Europe, Canada and other sources of alcohol.
The United States was a short run across the Straits of Florida during Prohibition and became an ideal stockpiling and forwarding area for contraband booze. If you can't find a ready speakeasy, bring your own made out of cardboard, alligators extra as this gentleman did in Miami Beach in the 1920's. Please checkout last year's writeup for more insights on rum-running in the Bahamas back in the day at: http://fksa.org/showthread.php?t=12155
So, we have a lot of hot 2016 kite board gear to checkout, let's start with the new kites!
A 2016 Contra kite goes up over a section of the almost 2000 ft. long beach in front of the Resort.
Running out the great new kites for this year in parade off Sprecks in Maui.
Continued
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