Monday, March 9, 2009

A 6 conch day. I plotted in a course over to Norman Cay for today. Wayne wants to see the old plane wreck there from the drug lord. We were going to head to Norman Cay today but decided to hang out here instead. We went snorkeling over at Allens Cay on the little beach where the car is starting to make a nice reef environment. I recognized many of the damsels, butterfly fish, etc. and there is coral starting to form on some of the car parts. We then headed to the unnamed islands and visited the sand bars where we're anchored, then proceeded over to SW Allens Cay (Lone Palm Island) and looked for conch along the tidal flats. I couldn't believe how many juvenile conchs there were there! Some were pretty good size but had no pronounced lip so we didn't take them and kept looking. We ended up with 7 "takable" conch but let the smallest one go. Wayne went back to the boat to get our hammer, screwdriver, knife and bucket (next time I need to remember my rock hammer for this job). This time instead of pounding the conch meat on the boat (and getting it all over) we decided to clean and smash (or bruise) the meat on the beach. It took longer this time and the first one we put the hole in the wrong spot. We counted out instead of in on the spirals and had holes all over the poor conch's shell so we couldn't get to him the normal way. Wayne ended up almost taking the entire tip of the shell off to get him out. After that we got the knack of it. I took the meat over to the rocks on the beach to start tenderizing it with my mallet while Wayne continued to skin the other ones, and the iguanas kept coming over trying to take my conch, hammer and board! I must have looked like a crazy woman swinging my mallet around and waving my arms trying to get them to back off. It's a whole lot of work for a little bit of muscle and the day was about over once we finished but we had a nice cracked conch dinner. It was weird because when we left this morning there were two boats in our anchorage - us and Sea Witch (a 30 ft Baba - Rich & Dave). When we returned boats surrounded us. Literally. 2 French speaking boats were on our side and behind us and a boat from NY in front of us. The one French boat we could have probably put a board across and used as a plank (okay not that close but you get the point). We started rolling and turning and he started getting nervous looking at us, but hey - he's the one that parked it so close to us... Anyhow I foresee a restless night wondering if we're going to slam into each other.

Wow - I am sunburned! I didn't think we'd be out all day and now I'm starting to sting like nettles.