Georgetown Passage – Day 2, 12-29-08, Part I
As we left you, we had thrown out the hook(s) in Allan's Cay in a
stiff breeze from the east. The current was strong enough to overcome
the wind, keeping us on our primary anchor, unlike in Nassau where,
other than a couple of nights where we turned on our anchors a couple
of times, we'd stayed head into the wind. However, the night before
our departure, the wind was light enough to where we swung to our
secondary anchor instead of the primary. That's when we picked it up,
followed by the primary, on our way out, and all went well with that.
However, I'm getting ahead of myself…
During our anchoring, Lydia'd said that she wasn't happy with the
power we had, and suspected that we had some remnants of the mooring
line we'd run over in Nassau remaining in the drive train. The
current was strong enough that while I really wanted to dive the prop,
as well as to do some more cleaning around the third speed sensor,
which hadn't been moving (and thus not reading), I would need to wait
until slack water. Before leaving Miami, when I dove the boat, to take
a scraper to what I assumed was a great deal of growth on both the
DynaPlate (a component of the ground plane for our HF radio) and the
keel cooler for our refrigerator (there was a lot of growth!), I also
cleaned around the speed and depth sensors.
However, I'd somehow overlooked the third one. The fact that the
other two speed sensors began working after my cleaning the area
around them confirmed my suspicion that the water flow was fouled by
growth we'd accumulated, not only in Saint Simons (LOTS!) and Miami
(presumed to be nearly as bad), and I wanted to see if I could revive
that third one. So, I put diving the boat with my hookah rig on my
1-2-3 (the little daily boat chores, which, if done religiously, keep
you ahead of the maintenance backup that sometimes puts you in the
workyard because of their volume) list for the next day.
We went to bed early after a light supper, as has become our habit.
We're slowly getting into island time, which has us more attuned to
the daily light schedule, rather than extensive time into the evening,
and a late awakening.
Allan's Cay is surrounded by many beach areas, with the chief
attraction being the iguanas which are present on the three islands.
Cruising guides say this occurs nowhere else in the world, a
prehistoric holdover with no clue as to how these arrived. They're
very accustomed to visitors, and being herbivores, pose no threat to
humans, but come running to see every dinghy that shows up. Whether
curious or hungry, we don't know, but before we got to go ashore, we
saw proof of that as excursion boats and other yachts' dinghies landed
on the beach of the long island north and east of Allan's Cay.
Our only excursion was to Allan's Cay itself, with the anchorage there
being very shallow, and thus occupied by only one catamaran, unlike
the area where we anchored, which had perhaps a dozen boats. We
arrived at close to high tide, with plenty of water under our dinghy,
but by the time we left, it was high and dry on the beach :{))
True to the forecasts, we were greeted by, eventually, a dozen or more
iguanas. These were very dark, unlike the light tan ones we'd seen in
Sapphire Beach, Saint Thomas, USVI, and substantially larger in most
cases. What we deemed the matriarch of the clan was easily 4 feet
long from nose to tail, and I was able to get pretty close to (her?)
it. Their coloration and skins were very interesting, as you could
have sworn they had sleeves running down their legs, and could have
been wearing sharkskin suits, based on the very fine texture and color
on their bodies.
They were not the least bit combative or territorial as we'd seen the
ones behave in USVI, so we never got to see the display of their
wattles under their chin, which they puff up to great balloons when
they're trying to appear fierce. They did have the resemblance to the
popular description of dinosaurs :{))
Wandering around the island showed that it must have snakes on it, as
the tracks in the sand were distinctive, as well as leading to some
holes in the ground. However, we didn't see any snakes of any sort
during our walk. The islands are limestone, which leads to some
interesting erosion patterns, as well as, some trapped conch shells
that apparently, with the chemical makeup of the shell and the
limestone, created cement. Shells appeared sort of fossilized, and
were one with the limestone.
Going back to the other side of the island again, I'd taken my
snorkeling gear and decided to have a look as we were on the way out
to return to the boat. I saw scattered conch on the harbor floor.
>From my prior experience in St. Croix, USVI, the only other place I've
dived for conch, I knew that they left distinctive tracks – almost
like a tire print – in the sand, and thus were fairly easy to find,
even if they were covered in sand or vegetation.
I dove in perhaps 5 feet of water and collected small piles of conch
for easy retrieval, but realized they were mostly for showing Lydia,
as they were far too small to eat. In Nassau, on one of our walks,
we'd visited the shops under the bridge. One of them, at the very
end, didn't even have a stall, but instead, on a makeshift table, was
cleaning conch, taken from a huge pile, for sale to folks who walked
up. Small ones were $2.50 and large ones were $4. We'd bought $5
worth, and watched him make it into a salad with the additional
ingredients he sent us across the aisle to purchase. A skilled native
can extract and prepare a conch in less than 5 minutes, but it's
widely held that it's better to hire a native than to try to do it
yourself. Heh…
Anyway, as I moved into deeper water, right under and around the
catamaran, I began to see larger conch. Lydia followed me in the
dinghy as I foraged, putting them in every time I got a handful that
was too big to manage. Eventually, I collected a baker's dozen of
what I later learned were mature size – we tossed perhaps another
dozen back as too small - but I was just judging by what I felt would
provide an eating-quantity of meat. I probably was in the water an
hour or so, and had gotten chilled, so we headed back to the boat.
When I arrived, before we got into seeing if we could extract, let
alone "clean" our catch, I put my mask back on and had a look under
the boat. Sure enough, there was a loop of line around the prop,
which, being a MaxProp, a feathering and reversing prop, would have
impeded the feathering/setting action, so I put that on the 1-2-3 list
for the next day, as I was far too chilled to go under for any length
of time at that point.
Ever the optimists, once I got back out of the water, we commenced to
seeing if we could duplicate what we'd seen on the table under the
bridge. Of course, an expert always makes it look easy, and I can
report that it ain't – at least the way we did it. We accumulate
books at flea markets and used book stores with great abandon, and
they usually don't get read for a long time, which is how we presume
we'd missed this before: A discovery of a book in our library which
we'd only browsed before revealed some secrets which we'll try later,
and which should make it easier and faster than what we did, but it
suffices to say that Lydia and I succeeded in extracting and skinning
(and, based on what we saw in that book, over-trimming) those 13 conch
in only about two hours, and went about tenderizing them.
The guy in the stall had used a standard meat-tenderizing hammer
(square, with lots of pyramid-shaped points on the flat surface),
putting the meat in a plastic bag like you'd use to put your fresh
vegetables in at the supermarket before your checkout. Unlike what
we'd read before, it wasn't the least bit messy, the plastic bag
containing all the juices which would otherwise splatter all over the
galley if prepared below. However, before we got to that point, we
had to deal with the slime…
Conch are coated in a thick layer of mucus or other substance which is
very tenacious. Some books recommend, and some of our friends had
done just that, going to the beach not only to remove the animal from
the shell, a process which can get messy just in hitting the right
point with a rock hammer, but also then to drag them through the sand
to remove the slime and then follow that by rinsing the sand off them.
Wimps….
Just as we'd seen him do, we used a bucket of salt water to rinse our
meat in, as well as to remove the slime from our hands. After I got
all the meat set for pounding, I dumped the bucket I'd tossed them all
into (not before removing them and putting them on the cutting
board!!) and refilled it after rinsing it a couple of times.
Oh, ya… I should say that the water in the Bahamas is amazing. No
slime, no mold, and crystal clear, over 20 feet down – I presume
that's from the absence of sewage treatment plants and large
agricultural runoff providing the nutrients algae need. Most cruisers
will argue is how that runoff and municipal sewage is how it happens,
not their emptying their own sewage into the sea –certainly, based on
the relatively high cruiser population in these anchorages, it
supports their contention)…
Tossing them all back in the again-freshened bucket and giving them
another rinse, I took my very large wooden mallet (the one I'd played
the anvil chorus with when reshaping my boom bail after repair in
Brunswick) and gently whacked them to a thin consistency. After each
was flattened, I put them back in the bucket of water for a final
rinse, and fished them all out into a bowl when I was finished. I
later learned in that same book that this method (using a flat wooden
beater, not the pointed surfaces hammer) tenderized, rather than
macerated, the meat (the locals call it bruise conch).
Taking them inside to cut up, we had some of the pieces right from the
cutting board, entirely raw and unseasoned. Much to our surprise,
they were not only delicious but also amazingly sweet and tender. Cut
into small cubes, they went into a pasta dish, and, as we learned, as
we ate, the cooking makes them tougher – closer to what I've always
referred to, in my dislike of clams, as "little erasers" – but not too
bad, due to our tenderizing, apparently. I've decided that I
definitely like conch, at least raw or very gently cooked, and look
forward to repeating the experience. We probably got nearly 3 pounds
of meat from that exercise, ate like gluttons but yet had enough for a
great beginning for a dinner the next day, and fell into bed – again
at an early hour.
Well, I see that this has become long again, so we'll leave you with
dreams of bounty from the sea, one of our chief goals in our cruising
(eat for free), and the thought that I'll have to dive the boat again
tomorrow before we leave.
As always, those on our log lists will receive real-time reports, but
those seeing these in the forums will have to wait until we have good
internet connectivity. There's no internet service here, and we don't
know when the next will be, but you can see our progress on our SPOT
page, http://tinyurl.com/FlyingPigSpotTracking …
Stay tuned :{))
L8R
Skip and Crew
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
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"And then again, when you sit at the helm of your little ship on a clear
night, and gaze at the countless stars overhead, and realize that you are
quite alone on a wide, wide sea, it is apt to occur to you that in the
general scheme of things you are merely an insignificant speck on the
surface of the ocean; and are not nearly so important or as self-sufficient
as you thought you were. Which is an exceedingly wholesome thought, and one
that may effect a permanent change in your deportment that will be greatly
appreciated by your friends."- James S. Pitkin
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