Sunday, May 8: from Green Turtle to Crab Cay next to Manjack Cay

     The guide book - which we have come to learn is biased toward certain businesses and against visiting the more remote cays, apart from not having all their facts down - told us the holding in Black Sound/Green Turtle Cay was poor.  Instead they urge cruisers to take a mooring.  We took our chances with the anchor.  This morning when we went to pull it up, I had to call Dan to help me right at the start.  We thought maybe we’d snagged something, but it turned out we were just dug in very well.  We pulled up a large chunk of heavy clay on the anchor which we had to bang off with the deck brush handle.  Poor holding?  We could have ridden out a hurricane in that stuff.  

     Dan made a canvas sun shade, which hangs off the sunny side of the boat in the evening.  It is one of the last things to come down as we prepare to weigh anchor.  It has two lines that hang into the water.  Yesterday one came up with a small crab attached.  Tommie was pretty interested in it until it pinched her in the nose.  Today it came up with a small seahorse attached.  So we saw a seahorse after all!

Tommie checks out the crab.

We didn't let her near the seahorse.  Both were returned to the sea, alive and well.

     Our destination was just a few miles away - a small set of cays that would be good protection from the East should we need it, and away from all the towns.  Several other boats had had enough of the towns too - we joined a small fleet, anchoring between Manjack Cay and Crab Cay.  Tide was going out, we had to hurry into the dinghy if we wanted to get through the cut between them to the snorkeling reefs on the other side.  

     There are supposed to be dinghy moorings all along the reefs - the guide book lists eighteen of them, and the chart shows them too.  But we didn’t find any.  There are big reefs about a mile offshore, perhaps they are out there.  We preferred to stay closer to shore.  We snorkeled in about twenty feet of water, taking turns holding onto the dinghy painter as we drifted along with the current over coral shelves and grassy ledges.  The water was incredibly clear.  We could see all kinds of different fish and corals.  Dan had his Hawaiian sling, hoping to spear us some dinner, but it was too deep for him to be very effective.  The fish fast and there were too many places for them to hide.  We spotted yellow-tail snapper, grouper, hogfish, and bar jacks - all good eating fish - but there would be no fish for us tonight.  We swam for well over an hour and were starting to get chilled so we started heading toward shallower water for easier re-entry into the dinghy.  (Climbing back into the dinghy from the water is not a graceful feat no matter what, but it’s easier if the water is calmer.)  Then we started spotting conch.

     We took turns diving on the conch and bringing them up to examine.  All were beautiful, all were healthy and alive, and most weren’t mature enough to harvest.  Determined to have conch for dinner, we kept going, giving our legs and our lungs (not to mention our ears) a good workout as we dove again and again fifteen-twenty feet down to pluck a conch off the ocean bottom.  We ended up with three beautiful specimens which Dan expertly dealt with.

This is the conch meat.  VERY tough.  A lot of people grind it with a meat grinder.  We take a hammer to it and pound the heck out of it.

     Conch fritters and french fries for supper!!