The Raft-Up, the Regatta, and the Sandbar
2026 The 15th Annual Children’s Cup Regatta on Mobile Bay / Fairhope Yacht Club for family friendly sailboat racing, live band, a silent auction, dinner, and kids activities!
Two events this weekend — and the unwritten rules that travel with you to any anchorage on the coast
This is one of those weekends where there is plenty to watch on the water. Two events, two days, two good reasons to put the boat in the water — and both of them happen out on the water itself, where the rules are the unwritten kind.
Saturday, June 6, the 15th Annual Children's Cup Regatta sails out of Fairhope Yacht Club — a full day of sailboat racing, food, and live music, every bit of it benefitting Children's Hospital of Alabama. Then Sunday, June 7, from 2–6 PM, the Drop Anchor Song Fest sets up off the Montrose Crescent at Ecor Rouge (LAT 30.5650, LONG 87.9050) — a free concert on Mobile Bay you attend by boat, with a band playing across the water and oysters coming right to your gunwale.
Two different scenes. One thing in common: a lot of boats, anchored close, for a good cause. Here's how to show up to either one — and to any sandbar or raft-up all summer — like the captain everybody's glad pulled in next to them.
The Weekend
Drop Anchor Song Fest — Sunday, June 7, 2–6 PM
Come by whatever floats — center console, sailboat, canoe, trawler, dinghy, yacht, or kayak. Drop your hook off the Montrose Crescent, settle in, and listen to East L.A. Fadeaway — the local Grateful Dead crew — play across the Bay. There'll be fresh boatside oysters off Isle Dauphine and a Best Boat Award for somebody. It's free, and it benefits Coastal Conservation Association Alabama and its work keeping our local waters clean. “Drop Anchor Song Fest is all about celebrating and preserving the thing that makes life here on the coast exceptional,” says event coordinator Ameri'ca Tickle. Playing on the Bay, to the Bay, for the Bay. Questions? Reach Ameri'ca at americatickle@gmail.com or follow Drop Anchor Song Fest on social.
15th Annual Children's Cup Regatta — Saturday, June 6
The Children's Cup runs out of Fairhope Yacht Club with a full day of sailboat racing, food, and live music — and every bit of it benefits Children's Hospital of Alabama. You can race it, watch it, or give to it. Register a boat or donate at Give.ChildrensAL.org/ChildrensCup.
Rafting Up: The Heaviest Boat Sets the Hook
When a crowd ties off together — at the Drop Anchor Fest, a Fourth of July raft-up, any anchor-out party — the whole thing hangs on one anchor doing the work. The biggest, heaviest boat drops first, into the wind or current, with all the scope it needs to hold the load of every hull tied to it. Everybody else comes in and ties off to that boat — they do not drop their own anchors into the cluster. A dozen anchors in a tight raft is a dozen ways to foul a rode and ruin an afternoon.
Come in slow — idle, no wake — and approach from downwind or down-current so you drift onto the raft instead of crashing into it. Have your fenders out and your lines ready before you're alongside, not while you're bouncing off your neighbor's gunwale. Tie bow, stern, and a spring line. And know how you're getting out: a raft breaks up from the outside in, and somebody with a seasick kid or a real emergency needs a clear path off the water. Never tie so tight that nobody can leave.
One more thing the afternoon will teach you. The sea breeze fills in by 3 or 4 PM on Mobile Bay, and a raft that's calm and comfortable at 2 can turn into a lee shore by 5. Watch the wind. Watch the anchor boat's hold. When it stops being fun, peel off early.
Watching the Race: Stay Off the Course
A sailboat race isn't a parade — it's a working fleet, and those boats can't stop or turn on a dime the way your center console can. If you run out to watch the Children's Cup or any regatta, stay well outside the course and downwind of the start line. Don't anchor in the racing lanes, and never anchor on or near a mark — that buoy the whole fleet is turning around is exactly where you don't want to be.
Keep your wake down. A powerboat wake rolling across the course kills a sailboat's wind and can knock the smaller classes flat. Boats under sail have the right of way over you every time — give them room, and don't motor through the middle of the fleet for a better photo. The best seat is anchored quietly off to the side with the engine off, watching the spinnakers fill downwind. That's the show.
The Sandbar, Wherever You Find One
The same good manners that make a raft-up work make a sandbar work — and most of them come down to two ideas: hold your ground, and leave the place better than you found it. Whether you're anchoring off Robinson, Bird, or Walker Island in Orange Beach, beaching at a Perdido Pass sandbar, or finding a quiet hook up the Bon Secour, these travel with you.
Bring two anchors and set them both. Bow into the current with enough scope to hold the swing, stern walked up onto the sand and stomped deep. The number-one cause of a bad sandbar day is a boat that came loose because nobody set the second anchor. Watch your scope, watch the tide, watch your neighbor.
Leave the glass and the dogs at the dock. No glass means no broken glass in the sand means no four-year-old's foot at 4 PM — bring cans, the cooler keeps them just as cold. And a lot of sandbars and islands post no-pet rules, because dogs spook nesting birds and shorebirds. Check before you load up the lab.
Respect what's posted and protected. A good many of our best spots are managed sanctuaries — nesting birds in the interior, seagrass nurseries on the flats, No Motor Zones along the edges — set aside by people who fought to keep them. If it's posted closed, the trees or the grass aren't yours that day. Idle or pole through the seagrass; don't run a prop through it. (Orange Beach posts its island rules at orangebeachal.gov; most spots post theirs at the landing.)
It's sea turtle nesting season, May 1 through October 31. Loggerheads, greens, and Kemp's ridleys nest on these beaches, protected by federal law — disturbing a nest can carry a fine up to $15,000. Don't dig deep holes (fill in what you dig), knock down sandcastles before dark so hatchlings don't get turned around, and haul off every chair, tent, and cooler. See a track in the sand like lasagna noodles? Stay back thirty feet, kill the light, and call the Sea Turtle Hotline at 1-866-Sea-Turtle (732-8878).
Keep the music down and leave only footprints. It's loud out on the open water and conversational at the anchorage — that's the rhythm. When the boats start clearing out, pack out every can, every wrapper, every cigarette butt, and grab somebody else's while you're at it. A bag of garbage in the shallows is a sea turtle's last meal. The next captain who anchors in your spot tomorrow shouldn't have to clean up after you.
The whole point is simple. These places — the sandbars, the raft-up coves, the start line off Fairhope — stay good because the people who use them treat them right. Show up slow, anchor smart, keep the noise reasonable, and carry out more than you carried in. That's not a sacrifice. On water this good, it's just the rent.
Anchor smart. Mind your neighbor's swing room. Keep the music down. Watch your wake on the way home. See you on the water.