May 17, 2016 Town of Current Settlement, Eleuthera

We decided to go to shore today, just to see what Current Settlement was like.  We  had to leave our dinghy on the beach.  With the change in the tide, you have to either drag the dinghy up on the shore when you arrive or when you leave.  We decided to try Dave’s pulley system for leaving the dinghy off the shore again.  The swivel that the pulley line runs through didn’t work quite right.  The line would twist and not slide through to move the boat off shore.  We spent some time going back and forth in the dinghy or walking the lines apart at the beach and were finally satisfied.  We realized we were using a cheap galvanized swivel that wouldn’t swivel with constant tension in the calm water.  The first time we used it, the wave action helped relieve the tension for the line to slide through.  Guess we’re going to have to replace that swivel. 

Dave working on anchoring system

We walked about a mile into town.  We found a little convenience store to get a cold drink and a couple snacks for the boat, An Elite Touch.  We visited with the owner for awhile.  The main grocery store has closed.  So he just recently opened this store and is gradually adding items.  It was about half the size of a single car garage.  But he had a cooler for drinks, a freezer for meats, and several basic items on the shelves.  He also told us that he sets lobster traps “condos” and fish traps.  When they bring in the catch, they can make $10-15,000 with one catch.  Not bad. 
 

little building with Coca-Cola sign is where we bought our snacks

We walked through the little town, population 130.  It reminded me of a little town on the prairie.  We walked to the south side of the island, saw a park, cemetery, post office/library, several homes, some deserted.  The few people we met were very friendly.  One asked “How you are?”, with the accent on the are.  We have heard it said that way in a few places. 

beach on the Exuma Sound side of the peninsula- south side

community park

the sign said beware of falling coconuts in 3 different languages, English, Spanish and French

We thought we could walk to the edge of town and overlook the Current Cut.  We asked directions and followed the road a long ways.  We could see clouds moving in, and we didn’t close the hatches on the boat.  So at the first site of water, we turned around.  Now we probably had 2 miles to walk back to the beach. 

On the last stretch of road to the beach, a car stopped to visit with us.  The guy was an old hippy from Canada.  He had a vacation home here in Current Settlement.  He has been coming here since sometime in the 80’s.  He had to rebuild once after a hurricane.  He wanted to tell us all about how safe and laid back this area is.  But then he went on to tell us about helicopters and airplanes coming in occasionally to catch drug smugglers, still today.  Sometimes people find bales of marijuana floating along the coast or suitcases of money.  Some turn it in and some sell it.  When he found out we were from SD, he started telling us about wanting to go to the Sturgis motorcycle rally.  By now, the clouds were moving closer and the flies were swarming around us.  Luckily another car came by and he had to move on.  I think he would have talked all afternoon.  Dave has had to ask other Canadians “do you have a story that ends?”

Back at the beach, we couldn't pull the rope though the swivel to bring the dingy back to shore.  Since I had the lighter weight clothes on, I volunteered to wade out to it in about waist deep water.  Dave’s shorts take forever to dry.  Plus he doesn’t have as many pairs to choose from as I do.  He’s going to change that swivel.  It’s good to play around with this anchoring system to get all the bugs worked out. 

We looked at the land map after we returned to the boat.  The town is actually quite a ways away from the cut.  I think if we had looked closer at that before we left, we wouldn’t have tried to walk to the cut.  Live and learn.
///photos of town and dinghy  

May 16, 2016 Exumas to Current Settlement, Eleuthera

We were up early listening to Chris Parker’s weather on the Single Side Band radio-6:30.  He predicted squalls and thunderstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday from the SE.   We don’t have much protection here, so we decided to move to Current Island in the Eleutheras.   We were really lucky to have 5 days of calm weather in this underwater playground.  After Chris gives his forecast, “subscribing vessels” can call in for advice on their particular route.  This morning we heard 2 other boats that we met last summer in GA.  Morahme was in the Caribbean.  And Moon Dancer was in the south eastern Bahamas.  It’s fun to hear their voices and follow where they are going.

tried a panoramic shot

Before we tied up our dinghy on the davits, we went over to say good bye to Bill “Cracky” and Tania.  Their boat is named Painful Pleasure.  I told them of the Jimmy Buffett line “there isn’t any doubt, if it doesn’t work out, the pleasure was worth all the pain”  They liked that. 

We only planned to go about 30nm today.  So we didn’t leave until about 10:30.  We had to motor for the first 10nm though a mine field of rocks.  We followed the charts, but can you really trust that they have every rock marked in exactly the right spot?  In these areas, you have to use VPR, visual piloting rules.  We kept a good watch on the color of the water and avoided the black or brown areas.  After we made it through that area, we were able to sail.  We went through Fleeming channel to be able to anchor on the north side of Current settlement.  This was the widest channel we have ever passed through.  Very uneventful.  Current Settlement is at the north western end of Eleuthera.  We came through the Current Cut back in March.  But tit has a strong current and has to be timed with the tide.  So we avoided that today. 

I was enjoying being on the bow looking for rocks and realized we don't have many photos from this angle

the red spots are rocks we have to navigate through

we look for those black spots

enjoying the ride

a sailboat that just came through the Current Cut

Tonight we had the rest of our grouper with Tania’s potato salad.  We really enjoyed meeting Cracky and Tania.  I think Cracky was excited to have someone to play with, too. 

May 15, 2016 conch fritters and whelks

We decided to have a lazy day on the boat.  I guess 3 days of sun and swimming had caught up with us.  Dave watched The Hobbit.

I spent some time reorganizing our stored food.  I have a cabinet near our galley that I use for “staging”.  I bring food out of the storage area that I wasn't to use in the next week or two.  Plus I keep products that are in glass jars in this cabinet.  I did some sorting through foods to be sure we were using the cans that were closest to expiration.  Plus it’s good to remember what we have stored and come up with recipes for them.   I heard another boat refer to going through their stored food as “going shopping”.  I worked up a pretty good sweat doing this.  So I went for a swim behind boat and used a float to just hang out for a while.  Luckily, no remoras came out from under the boat to check me out.  They kind of creep me out. 

We decided about 3:00 to get in the dinghy and check out the rocks to the north of us.  We found whelk on the rocks and were able to get them right from our dinghy.  They are a like a large snail.  We thought we would need a screw driver or pick to pull them off the rock, but we were able to get them off by hand, wearing gloves.  We were so excited to find them so easily.  They were hard to refuse when they were right in front of us.  We ended up with about 15 of them.

hard to see the whelk on the rock in a picture

bucket O whelk

Our new social director, Cracky, invited us over for conch fritters.  Tania was making them from scratch.  I asked about the ingredients.  Cracky said they were made by mixing flour, bacon powder, ketchup and water, onion, sweet peppers, and conch.  Then you chill it for a while before deep frying.  I had never heard of bacon powder.  So I asked him what it was and where you find it in the store, etc.  Sounded fantastic!

Then I went into their galley to watch Tania and offer any help.  I asked her if I could see the bacon powder to see what to look for in the store.  She pulled out her baking powder!  I started laughing and went “OH, baking powder!”  She didn’t hear my conversation with Cracky about the bacon powder.  I had to then explain to Cracky that I knew what baking powder was, but thought he said B A C O N powder.  He probably did with he accent.  He must have thought “crazy American”. 

Tania making conch fritters

We made another “emergency conch salad” to share.  They had never heard of Rotel.  I guess it’s Mexican.  We both realized that we haven’t seen any Mexican restaurants in the Bahamas. 
The conch fritters were great.  They had much more conch in them than anything you get at a restaurant.  She made a dipping sauce out of mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard that was perfect.  We enjoyed a few beers and stories, but left before Dave got into telling jokes.  They wanted to send some left overs with us to help clean out their refrigerator.  They gave us peas and rice and potato salad.  I also got Tania’s Johnny cake recipe, another Bahamian treat. 

Back at the boat, Dave cleaned the whelk.  First you have to kill them by boiling or steaming them or freezing them.  We tried steaming.  Dave didn’t think he actually killed them with the steaming.  Some of them closed off their ends and tolerated the heat.  He used a screw driver to work them out of the shell.  But since some of them weren’t dead, they were a struggle.  You have to cut away the guts and end up with a chewy piece of meat.  We were told you had to cook them a long time, usually in a sauce, and then you can serve them over rice.  Dave decided to cook them for a long time in butter and garlic.  We ended up watching a movie and had the whelk as a chewy treat.  Dave called it whelk jerky and one piece could last you though the entire movie.  We don’t think we have to bother with them again.  Too much trouble for what you get. 

you boil them to get them out of the shell

they were like a big chewy snail

May 14, 2016 HUGE conch and strawberry grouper

I happen to be up early enough to get a nice sunrise photo.  I had a view of the horizon between some of the rocks.  Usually we have land to the east of us.

sunrise

Dave took off with Cracky about 8:00 to help place a fish trap out in an area between the rocks but south of our boats.  Bahamians are allowed to do that, but not visitors.  He said our crab trap could be mistaken for a fish trap.  So we pulled that up.  These sand crabs aren’t interested in our bait anyway. 

We had breakfast and got ready for another day on the water.  In the meantime, Cracky was checking the shoreline near our boat for whelk, a large snail.  His wife was following him with their fishing boat.  He was getting near the end of the rocks by the time we headed over there.  Just about this time, he stood up on a couple rocks above the water line and we noticed he was nude.  We decided we didn’t need to join him.  Dave yelled to him from our boat “aren’t you worried about a Moray eel biting that thing off?”.  He replied that he’d have to look pretty hard to find it.  Cracky seems to be a “go-er” either fishing or scavenging for conch and whelk.  I guess he goes so fast, he looses his swimwear.   

After he got in his boat and dressed, he came over to our dinghy.  He thought we should motor over his fish trap and look at what was in there.  He had several fish inside the trap and a large grouper under it.  The whole area looked like a great area to snorkel.  There was a current, so we decided to “drift snorkel”.  We hung a line on each side of the dinghy.  Then we hung onto that line and let the dinghy drift over the area.  We saw all kinds of fish.  I generally stayed with the boat and let Dave head off with the spear.  We hopped back in the dinghy after we covered the area and motored back to the beginning.

Today, Dave speared 2 strawberry groupers about 15 inches in length.  He tried for a couple snappers and trigger fish.  Again, he was going for larger fish.  But it was a little more difficult to get a good shot in the current.  After the second time though, we continued on through a grassy area.  Here we found HUGE conch.  They must have weighed 10-15 lbs a piece.  I picked up two at one time and wasn’t sure I was going to be able to swim to the surface with them.  It was a workout. 

Cracky and Tania were back at their boat by the time we finished.  We went over to thank them for showing us the great spot.  They were grilling hot dogs for lunch and asked us to join them.  They didn’t have to ask twice. 

our boat from Cracky and Tania's boat

After lunch, Cracky asked Dave to help him bring up his trap.  He wanted someone at the helm while the other one brought up the trap.   Actually, he wanted Dave to pull up the trap.  I went along as the photographer.  When we reached the trap, we could see that the big grouper was still near his trap.  Cracky jumped in with his snorkel gear and spear and was back in a few minutes with huge Nassau grouper.  He offered half of it to us for helping him.  He said he couldn’t have speared it if he didn’t have someone at the helm in his boat. 

Dave at helm while Cracky heads in for the grouper

spear fished the grouper

Then Dave brought up the trap.  He had about 2 dozen fish in it.  There was a rock fish, 2 trigger fish, a smaller grouper, and several grunts.  He took the trap over to the beach and kept it in the water.

pulling in the fish cage for Cracky

only native Bahamians can use fish traps

We went back for our dinghy and met him at the beach.  We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning fish and conch.  I brought a short lawn chair to sit in at the table.  Dave and Cracky either sat on 5 gal buckets or were on their knees.  I brought a few more beers and figured this was the best beach bar I had ever been to.  You didn’t even have to get out of your seat to go to the bathroom!   I even helped clean the conch today.  They have a sticky, nasty, goober like slim that sticks to everything.  I had to really scrub the can coozies when we were done. Cracky ended up giving us half of the big grouper for helping him with the trap.  Didn’t seem like we did enough to deserve that. 

Queen conch

cleaning the huge grouper and gave us half

our strawberry grouper

Tonight we made conch salad.  We didn’t have any fresh onions or tomatoes so we made it using a can of Rotel and some celery. We used the juice of one lemon and some orange juice.  It turned out great.  Dave is calling it my “Emergency conch salad” recipe.  Dave sautéed the grouper in butter and garlic powder for dinner.  Another great day!

conch for the freezer

conch salad

grouper

May 13, 2016 Conch and spear fishing

Dave was up and drinking coffee in the cock pit by 6:30.  He said he felt like a little kid hoping the neighbor would come ask him to play.  Sure enough, Cracky came to get him and they went fishing until about 8:30.  They went off shore to a follow a shelf, but had no luck. Dave still enjoyed being on the water and getting to know Cracky.  His name was Bill, and his wife was Tania.  She had lung cancer and a heart attack in the last 10 years.  So she enjoys relaxing on the boat, but doesn’t do as much as she used to.  So he enjoys finding people to “play with”.  They were both in their late 60’s, and Cracky works for Avis.
 

only 2 boats at anchor

We had breakfast and then decided to snorkel and spear fish again.  As we were getting ready, Cracky came by and offered to show us where we could find conch.  There was a shallow area in front of his boat that had a lot of conch.  We snorkeled the area in about 4 feet of water and picked up a half dozen average size conch.  It’s funny how underwater you think they are so big.  So back at the boat, we looked them over and only kept some of the largest ones.  We took the conch back to our boat, put them in a mesh bag and hung them off of our stern.  That way they were kept in the water until we could clean them.

most conch we've seen in one place.  picked the largest and threw back the rest

We went back to the reef on the outside of the rocks.  We both spearfished today.  I only stuck a couple grunts.  But it was fun to try.  I also stayed very close to the dinghy.  If I caught a fish, I wanted it out of the water and in the dinghy as soon as possible.  I didn’t want a bigger fish to fight me for it. 

Dave spent most of his time looking for larger fish, since we had several little ones from yesterday.  He ended up with a sailor’s choice (looked like a grey grunt).  After cleaning all those small fish yesterday, he decided to go for bigger fish.  Today he noticed an improvement in holding his breath and equalizing his ears.  He’s working his way up to the “big time” spear fishing championships. 

We headed back to our boat to clean the fish.  But we noticed that Cracky had set up a little plastic table in the water by the beach with an umbrella.  We stopped to check it out and he told us to get our fish, conch and gear and join him.  So we spent the rest of the afternoon, sitting in about 2 feet of water cleaning fish and conch at beach.  I even brought a couple beers for Cracky as a thank you.

Cracky's fish cleaning station

He gave us lessons on cleaning conch.  Dave had done a pretty good job before, but he gave us a few pointers that made it easier.  He had a special hammer for breaking through the shell, which was nice to borrow.  We also cleaned our few fish from today. 

cleaning conch

instruction from Cracky

cleaning fish

We were tired when we got back to the boat.  Being in the sun and swimming most of the day makes you tired.  But we loved it!

May 12, 2016 Snorkeling and spearfishing

Today we took the dinghy to check out the reefs on the “outside” of the islands.  The side towards the Exuma Sound was deeper.  We found a coral reef and tried to fish from the boat.  I kept catching my hook on the coral.  I was using the leader that our friend, Gloria, had made for us.  I didn’t want to loose it, so I decided to snorkel away from the side Dave was fishing.  It didn’t take me long to figure out we needed to move the boat closer to the schools of fish near a wall on the reef.  Then Dave could spear fish.  After we moved the boat, he took the spear and stayed near the dinghy.  You want to get the fish into the dinghy as soon as possible to avoid a barracuda or shark from trying to take it away from you :(  We hadn’t seen any sharks yet.  And the barracuda were small, only about 2-3 feet long.  And they weren’t very curious. 

our boat in beautiful water

Gloria's jig on a steel leader

I enjoyed snorkeling the reef.  There were more fish here than we saw in the Land and Sea park a few weeks ago.  There was a large ray with a couple remoras following it.  After awhile, I decided to go back to the dinghy and wait for Dave.  As soon as I got in the boat, he started to bring fish up on his spear.  He had been trying to get larger fish that were deeper under rock shelves.  He spent a lot of time practicing diving, holding his breath, and getting a decent shot at the fish.  Once he saw me back at the dinghy, he went for those that were more plentiful.  He ended up spearing 4 grunts and 2 squirrel fish.  By the end of the day, his 3 pronged spear was pretzeled and dull from hitting a lot of rocks when he missed the fish. .  It was now after 3:00 and the sun wasn’t as high, making it harder to see under water.  So we called it a day.  On our way back to our boat, we noticed there was another boat anchored here, but not too close to us.  It was a Bertram, motorized trawler type of boat.  They could get into a more shallow area than we could, so they were to the east of us on the other side of a bank of rocks.

spear fishing

grunt and squirrel fish

Dave cleaned the fish on our stern again.  He wasn’t at it too long when our neighbor came over in his fishing boat to introduce himself.  His nickname was Cracky and he was here with his wife, Tania.  They were from Nassau and had been coming to this spot for a bout 15 years.  They can make it here in about 3 hours.  After watching Dave for awhile, he left and came back with a fish scaler.  We used to have one, not sure why we didn’t bring one.  Cracky invited Dave to go fishing in the morning for mahi off shore a ways.  Of course, Dave jumped at the chance.
 
click for video of Dave cleaning fish and feeding the remora

May 11, 2016 passage from Rock Sound, Eleuthera to Exumas

We left Rock Sound about 9:00.  Since we had turned off our autopilot with the rewiring, we had to “recommission” before we could use it.  Part of the recommission was done at anchor.  You have to teach the autopilot what the limits of the wheel are and what type of boat you have, etc.  Then on the water, it has you maintain a course while it reads what the boat is doing, then the autopilot “learns” from there as you use it.  We like how simple the new Raymarine Autopilot commissions.  The autopilot gyroscope, the GPS and the navigation computer all have to “talk” to each other to have the headings match.  We have 3 readings on the boat for our heading, true, magnetic and compass.  Dave had been choosing whether we will use true or magnetic, and usually uses true.  The actual compass is affected by metals and electronics near it.  The GPS uses satellite.  And the auto pilot computer gets a bearing from the gyro and the GPS.  Today, we found that the readings were the closest to each other that they have ever been.  Right now, the distances we are traveling can easily be corrected by a few degrees because we can zoom out and see our destination on the chart plotter.  But if we were covering a long distance across a big body of water, being off a few degrees can make a big difference.  And zooming in and out distorts the accuracy of the chart.  Somewhere in the world, the true and magnetic readings align.  We think it is in Miller, SD, the center of the universe. 

We have 2 cup holders near our compass head.  Dave thought he would put our hand held VHF radio in one of the holders.  He brought me over to watch the compass as he removed and placed the radio in the holder.  It actually moved the compass by five degrees!   Guess we won’t be putting the radio in that spot.  We don’t have to rely on our compass, but it’s there as a backup.   

We just love our days at sea.  The different colors of the water always amaze us.  By about 2:00, we could see land.  But it would take us 3 more hours to actually anchor.  At about 4:30, we caught a 2 foot mackerel.  We brought it on board and wrapped it in a wet towel to let it die and to keep it until we anchored and could clean it.  But we didn’t get it in the towel before it splattered fish blood on the boat and on us.  I don’t know what we’d do if we caught something that was 4 feet or bigger.  Other sailors have told us that the cock pit ends up being a bloody mess.  We’ll give it a try if that’s what it takes.  We usually wear “boat clothes” on the boat, so if we get a few blood stains, oh well.

We headed to Sail Rocks in the very northern tip of the Exumas.  They are a group of small islands that don’t offer a lot of protection from strong winds.  But we were expecting several nice days and thought we’d give it a try.   It was beautiful!  And we were the only ones there.

no one in sight for miles

Dave cleaned the mackerel off of our swim platform.  He used the head as bait in our crab trap.  We threw if off the stern to see if we could get any sand crabs.  As Dave was filleting the mackerel, he fed the fish parts to the sea gulls and and remoras.  We thought the remoras were sharks at first.  It was quite a show. 

mackerel

bait for crab

it's a fight between the birds and the remora

one for the remora

one for the birds

We enjoyed our mackerel and a beautiful sunset in our cockpit in our own little paradise. 

nice fillets