[This email forwarded from sailmail status report.]

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 befo 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 !
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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