Bare Spear week

Once a year the pier paints itself for Bare Spear week. Solchute already lives on sun, kick, and film; this week stacks island athletics on top—little cloth, public boards, and events that look like survival even when they are only score. The shape nods at real Pacific festival sports. The names, rules, and bets are house-made. No Chinese label on the badge. English only on the stamps.

What the week is for

Porto Gostoso fills with boats. Take Bay cameras rent space on the dune. Academy students on island leave show up in wraps and try not to look like tourists. Atlas boys on holiday learn that light kicks still do not count here.

Points feed one pier board. Tribe-colored paint is optional Heat. The winner drinks free for a night; the loud loser often buys a kick-cup round if the tavern boat is tied up.

Kit

Default race kit is a loincloth wrap—hami-style, house cut. Enough to stay on when you run, paddle, and slide. Not enough to hide a kick bruise. Body paint is free Heat if a judge stamps it. Boots only where the chart says thorns, hot rock, or deck screws.

Covering up mid-race without a medical pin costs score. Dropping the wrap on the slope runout is a long bare walk back up.

Live contests

Spear trunk — long spear, hard dark tip, target a banana trunk. Score is bite and stick, not pure javelin meters. Hunt and fight skill, not a pretty long miss.

Vaka & reed — two-man canoe sprint on the breakwater lane, plus pora-style reed-float swim heats. Ocean first.

Banana haul — run with heavy banana stalks. Also the middle leg of the optional triathlon card.

Slope slide — banana trunks lashed as a narrow sled, loincloth and paint, down the festival hill. Festival-only. Locals do not commute this way.

Island triathlon card (optional full day)

One stamp, three legs, in order: reed craft paddle → banana stalk run → open-water swim on a reed float. Ocean skill, farm load, and endurance on one card. Medics at each handoff. Light form on any leg voids the stamp, not just the leg.

Men who only want one event stay on the single pins. Men who want the full postcard walk the triathlon card at dawn and finish salty, sticky, and loud.

House add-ons

Between spear heats: optional crotch-kick exchange in wrap only—Atlas friendship rules, Solchute heat. False start on the vaka: one free kick from the other stern before restart. Slope crash is not always a DQ; leaving your wrap on the hill is.

Take Bay may buy rights to film any open heat. If you enter, you already signed the festival image line at the pier desk.

Spear trunk Vaka & reed Banana haul Slope slide Solchute map