We wanted to use a phone, so we motored the big five miles to Little Farmer's Cay and dropped anchor again. (As it turned out I was able to upload and download mail but not our web page updates, as our web machine was down. The acoustic coupler is working well here, although we tend to go to islands which don't have phones!) Little Farmer's is hilly and the town looks almost Mediterranean, but there were few people (either cruisers or locals) around, so we didn't feel interested in staying more than just overnight. The next morning we carefully zigged and zagged the winding route around the cay and through Little Farmer's cut into Exuma Sound. It was pretty much low tide, and the depthometer read under 7 feet at one spot, but we managed to avoid running aground. Severn Star had recommended a snorkeling spot near Musha Cay, so again we had a vast distance to cover -- this time 8 miles. It was almost 14 miles to Lee Stocking, and we had to motor the whole way as the winds were nonexistent, but the next day we did most of the 8 miles to Rat Cay under sail in a rare westerly breeze.
Rat Cay to George Town was 24 miles, but other than that our legs in the Exumas have been no longer than 16 miles. Our average sailing day, rounded to the nearest half mile, has been 9.5 miles, but averaging the total distance we've traveled in the Exumas over the time we've been here gives us a pace of just less than 5 miles per day.
We snorkeled on the reefs at the northeast tip of Musha Cay, which were pretty but did not have a lot of big fish. Britt speared a big lobster and a small one, two medium-small triggerfish, and a small snapper. After we both dove on the small reefs which were protected by some offshore rocks, Britt swam around the outside of the rocks and back into the cut, aided by the current, while I drifted the dinghy some distance away as I followed him. Suddenly he waved me down and called, "Bring the dinghy over here...now!" A big shark was cruising along the cut, signaling the beginning of the shark dinner hour -- and therefore the end of cruiser snorkeling hour.
Lee Stocking Island is the home of the Caribbean Marine Research Center, a laboratory for the study of biological oceanography. Because of this, no fishing is allowed in the vicinity. Deprived of our hunting, we went gathering instead. Several coconut palms (not native to the Bahamas) are on one of the beaches, so Britt tossed fallen coconuts at the ripe ones still on the tree and managed to dislodge a few good ones. Coconuts right off the tree don't look at all like the hairy nut you see in stores; those nuts are encased in a thick greenish-brown sort of triangular shell which is incredibly hard and tough. Cracking coconuts is sort of like cleaning conch in that it requires a lot of hacking away with tools, and creates a big mess. But we persevered, and that night we had coconut rum drinks, coconut rice, grilled snapper (left over from Musha Cay), and sauteed carrots with honey and coconut.
There are several nice trails on Lee Stocking, so we got in a bit of hiking, including an expedition to the summit of Perry's Peak, the highest mountain in the Exumas. This was of course a formidable challenge, but since we have lots of climbing experience from our Colorado days, we were able to conquer this mighty peak after an arduous 20 minutes or so of hiking. The view from the lofty summit, a full one hundred and twenty-three feet above sea level, was truly magnificent. Ok, it wasn't Pike's Peak, but it was nice just the same. The islands of the Exumas stretched out to the northwest and southeast, and clusters of masts were visible here and there poking above the topography. One one side the shallow Exuma Banks gleamed light aqua, on the other was the dark and luminous blue of the deep Sound.
In the morning we dinghied over to the research center dock, but (as other cruisers had warned us) there isn't much outreach to cruisers. The secretary who greeted us in the office knew nothing about the research activities on the island; her main objective seemed to be to force us to drink water ("I know you're sailors, and you're used to conserving water, but you haven't been drinking enough water yet to hike around my island. Please drink some of our reverse osmosis water. Now.") She also lectured us on proper use of VHF radios, in an accusatory tone which did not sit well with me, considering that we haven't even used the VHF in the past few days. ("If you chat on channel 16, we will kick you out of the anchorage. Don't you realize how important the VHF is to the safety of our divers and that you are threatening their lives by your wanton abuse of channel 16?") We finally escaped the Water-n-Radio Nazi and went to check out the "education center", which turned out to be a converted shed with a few posters about the life cycle of various sea creatures.
We left Lee Stocking Island via Adderly Cut and immediately put up the sails and trolled the fishing lines. As usual, we caught only seaweed (it's a good thing we have that pole spear, or we'd never eat any fish) until we pulled the lines in as we prepared to enter Rat Cay Cut; the wind caught one of the lines and tossed it into the wind generator. Fortunately the spinning blades merely snapped the line before things got too fouled.
Rat Cay Cut was another one of those obvious highways of deep water surrounded by pale sandbars. While planning our Bahamas trip, we'd gotten more than a little nervous looking at the charts which showed no buoys or other markers at all. Now that we're used to navigating by the color of the water, I suspect we're going to be even more nervous in the murk of the Chesapeake.
We dropped the dinghy and went over to the reef-strewn Children's Bay Cut to dive for our dinner. The visibility wasn't great, but there was a variety of coral, and a lot of fish. Britt speared two medium-small lobsters (I had spotted one of them), a snapper, and a bar jack. I saw a small nurse shark scootching along the bottom, which surprised me since nurse sharks usually just sleep during the day. Then, while Britt was taking potshots at a grouper (and missing; the grouper was just laughing at him and leading him on) we both saw a huge nurse shark gliding by. We stuck a little closer together after that.
On our way back to the boat, we noticed a likely-looking dark spot on the sand bottom near a big beach on Rat Cay. I checked it out with the lookie bucket -- it turned out to be not a reef, but a wreck. A big old boat with twin engines, carrying sacks of concrete. Britt grabbed his gear and dropped over the side, saying, "I bet there are bugs under that wreck." Sure enough, he surfaced with a huge lobster, the equal of the monsters he and Jeff had gotten near Black Point.
Let me now take a moment to praise the lobster. The spiny lobster is the most delicious sea creature in these waters. They are not easy to find, but if you check under every ledge and in each coral crevice, you're likely to score at least some of the time. They generally just sit there in their caves and wait to be speared, unlike fish which have the unsportsmanlike habit of actually swimming around. Cleaning a lobster is a snap, almost literally: twist off the tail and slide an antenna tip through the anal hole to pull out the intestine, then crack off the legs and antennae. There is an incredible amount of meat on each lobster. A medium tail will feed us both for dinner, and the legs and antenna bases (once steamed, the shells are easily cracked, and the thick columns of meat easily extracted) provide enough meat for a pasta salad for lunch the next day. A really huge lobster, like the 16-incher from the wreck, makes three dinners. And the nicest thing is that the meat from a big one is just as sweet and tasty as the meat from a small one.
The lobsters, of course, do not particularly like to be speared and eaten. They wave their antennae and legs around, and probably wish they had claws like the American Lobster. I admit that after watching an unhappy caught lobster, I considered becoming a vegetarian. But later (over grilled lobster tail, lightly basted with a citrus-garlic sauce) I realized that even if we hadn't been there with a spear, that lobster was probably not going to live a long and happy lobster life. The nurse sharks we saw, for example, were doubtless looking for their own lobster dinners. It's just life in the food chain, and we're not necessarily at the top; we just hope that those sharks appreciate the fine taste of lobster as much as we do, and prefer it to, say, the taste of human.
Ode to the Spiny Lobster
Call it a bug, spiny lobster, a craw-
fish or crayfish, langouste, or suchlike appellation
This tasty crustacean, by lack of a claw
Is distinct from the Maine type (a distant relation)
Caribbean waters are where these are found
On reefs which encircle these islands around
The warm water means one can wear a much thinner
Wetsuit, when diving for these for one's dinner
In stores or in restaurants this treat can be bought
But it's much more fun (not to mention much cheaper)
To dive down to ledges, successively deeper
Until sweet success, and the lobster is caught
The hunter is proud, and the boat's cook is thrilled
The barbecue's lit, and the lobster is grilled.
So here we are in George Town, just in time for the annual Cruiser's Regatta. Us, and about 500 other boats. Some people spend the entire season here; we'll probably be here a few weeks before heading on again.