Regatta Day - Sort Of

The first Wednesday of August is the Annual Royal St. John's Regatta Day. Last year, it was our first full day here, because that Wednesday was the 1 st of August. The Regatta is a holiday in the St. John's area, everything is closed, including the nursery I work at in Portugal Cove. It is another pretend holiday where no-one goes to work but there isn't any holiday pay.
The regatta is a rowing regatta held at Quidi Vidi Lake (usually pronounced Kitty Viddie, but some posh people say Kwai-da Vy-da) Because the boats they use are tippy, the regatta is postponed if the weather is too windy 'on the pond' or if it is too cold and wet for the food vendors to make any money. The morning of the regatta, the PTB meet at the rowing club to determine if the races will go ahead or not, and then release their decision to the media. The whole city listens to the morning radio programmes to find out if they can sleep in or have to go to work as usual. Today the race was postponed (as it was last year) officially due to wind but really because it is cold, wet and rainy. In fact today was day 10 of RDF (rain drizzle fog).
This year is the 190th year for the Regatta, and about the 30th time it has been postponed in that history. There is some concern that it will be postponed again tomorrow morning because of weather and actually won't go ahead until Friday. The radio announcer this morning asked if it had ever run on a Friday, the Chair of the Organising committe didn't think so, but callers later remembered in 1969 and once in the 50's that it had run on a Friday. They remember being given dispensation from the priest to be able to go.
I was off today anyway, on my first day of holiday. Studyboy's parental units arrive late tonight for a visit, and I was glad of the non-holiday to be able to run errands and buy groceries before their arrival. Also, now we will be able to show them a true St John's tradition, "the oldest sporting event in North America."