April 24-26, 2023 Spearfishing and moved to Current Settlement

 4-24 Monday Today was my dad’s birthday.  He would have been 107 had he been alive.  He was an awesome father.
We had a beautiful morning at anchor.  I enjoyed coffee and later breakfast in the cockpit.  
In the early afternoon, we took the dinghy around the west end of Russell island out to the reef that is offshore on the north side of several islands in this area.  
Dave carried a spear, I carried a camera, and we swam holding onto our dinghy.  Dave speared one strawberry grouper (it has reddish pink spots).  And we found 2 fully grown conch and brought them back with us.  We had been watching a squall that was first to the south of us, then moved to the west of us.  After swimming in the rain a short time, we decided to go back to the boat.  By then the squall became a widespread rain shower.  It seemed to take forever to get back to the boat with the 3.5hp outboard.  Once back, we raised the dinghy on the davits and then unloaded it.  We hung or set things out to dry in our enclosed cockpit.  Then we went below for hot showers.  We were already wet, so the rain didn’t bother us.  We were just glad it wasn’t windy when we were returning.  
We were going to grill chicken, but ended up with a nice baked chicken dinner.

 

 4-25 Tuesday We moved the boat near Current Settlement about 1.5 hours away.  We will have better protection from the southeast winds predicted in the next few days.  Plus we like to snorkel near there.  
After anchoring, Dave removed the conch from their shells, cleaned it and cut it into pieces.  I cut up vegetables that we had on hand (tomato, onion, celery, cucumber, garlic) and we made conch salad using lime juice, salt, pepper and jalapeño powder.  We let it sit about 30 minutes to “cook” the conch in the lime juice.  Very tasty!!

 

pulling the conch out of the shell after loosening it

ugly thing!

the meat after removing the skin

Dave was told this part was supposed to enhance your sex life

I placed my hand there to show the size of the bowls

4-26 Wednesday We had a storm blow through last night around 3:00am.  We have to get up and shut our windows and turn on our fans.  The boat was rocking and rolling too much to sleep, so we both were awake on our phones for awhile.  That made for a lazy day.  We took naps, made water, and worked on some little projects.
We found a squid on our aft swim deck this morning.  That’s 2 years in a row at this anchorage that we have found a squid on our boat.  The sea biscuits and sea urchins I had on the aft deck were gone this morning.  Should have brought them on board before the storm. 

Dave attached our “scoop” for the hatch over our bed.  It acts as a dorade, the front can be pulled down to stop rain from coming in, but we can still get a breeze.  
We have to start the generator to make water.  Before starting, Dave used the shop vac to clean out the air conditioning lines.  Then the water doesn’t sit in there and stew until we use it again in over a month.  I took advantage of having power to the computer and did some more work on my blog.