2/19/01 | Reversals of fortune

pride goeth

We felt pretty virtuous on Friday. The perfectly nice 12-knot wind had the bad grace to be from the southeast, the direction just about everyone was going, and most sailboats we saw that day were motoring. But we, virtuously, short-tacked up to our anchor and sailed off it, then unrolled the jib and floated away from Warderick Wells. We tacked south and then east, south and then east, until we were just a mile from Sampson Cay; then the motor was on for a mere 25 minutes as we pulled in and anchored.

Ah, yes, we were the true sailors that day. Of course, Sampson Cay is only about 12 miles from Warderick Wells as the crow flies, and about 16 miles as the boat cruises. As the sailboat tacks (or at least as this one did), it's just under 25 miles. If we hadn't had the luxury of choosing a nearby destination, we wouldn't have had the luxury of sailing. Most cruisers motor rather than tack, and frequently we do, too. We also have the luxury of solar and wind power to charge the batteries, and our diesel heater so we'd have hot water that evening. But just as we were starting to get all puffed up about how independent we could be of our motor...

No, the diesel engine didn't break. It was far more subtle than that:  we took the dinghy out for a fish-hunting expedition, and bumped the outboard's prop while crossing a shallow sandbar. Now the prop freewheels every time we twist the throttle to any more than idle speed. So what if we can sail Windom all over creation?  We're still dependent on our "car" to get us to shore or to snorkeling reefs, still tied to that good old internal combustion. Oh, sure, we carry oars, but a RIB (rigid bottom inflatable) is not really designed with rowing in mind, so we rarely row unless we don't have a long way to go, and there aren't many waves, and there's not much current.

Britt disassembled the outboard and (rare for him) couldn't figure out what was wrong, let alone how to fix it. After talking to friends, we verified that we'd "spun the prop" -- destroyed a sacrificial bushing between the prop hub and blades. So now we are condemmed to idle-speed putting until we can get a new prop, which we hope we can do in George Town. Idle-speed putting, and of course, rowing -- now that will make us feel virtuous, indeed.

fishy revenge

From Sampson Cay we motorsailed south (with a conspicuous lack of virtue) along the banks to Dotham Cut north of Black Point, and then out in Exuma Sound to Rudder Cut Cay. Out in the deep water, we trolled our fishing lines, and sometime in the middle of the day we got a hit. Britt began to reel it in:  "Probably just a barracuda. Wait, it's fighting a little...oh, it's really fighting, it must be something else, but I don't see it jumping like a mahi....Naah, it got off." We both saw something big and shiny swimming away. But as Britt reeled in the last bit to the hook we could see that a barracuda had indeed bitten the lure -- and then a shark had bitten the barracuda. All that remained was its head.

Ordinarily, when we've hooked a 'cuda that's bigger than we want to eat, Britt uses pliers to pull out the hook so he can release the fish. But since this was only a chomped-off dead barracuda head, he didn't bother with the pliers and just reached into the mouth to remove the hook -- and the jaws snapped shut!  He yelped in pain and surprise as blood spurted from his finger. Was that fishy mouth smiling, just a little?

Still, we've taken a lot more bites of fish than fish have taken bites of us. Between our trolling and our spearfishing, we've caught just about every meal we've eaten. And although we've shared the water with countless barracuda -- there are usually one or two swimming near every reef -- this is the first one that's bitten back. You can bet we won't be sticking our hands into any more toothy mouths.

the conch stole our bucket!

Rudder Cut, famous for kicking up scary standing waves in rough seas, was calm and placid as we negotiated the pass back to the banks side. We turned north and anchored near a large cave; although two other boats were anchored within sight, we had the cove we were in to ourselves.

Once Britt determined the outboard was unfixable with what we had on hand, we decided to stick to exploration by swim power. But we didn't need to go far to see great scenery. In snorkels and swim fins, we kicked over to the cave and scrambled awkwardly upright in the shallow water. Sunlight streamed down through a hole in the roof, illuminating hundreds of tiny fish, none bigger than a toothpick, which swarmed around our feet.

We lazily floated around the corner of the point. Coral had grown on the substrate of fallen rock along the edge of the cay, and the usual assortment of brightly-colored fish swam in and out of the little cavelets and tunnels formed by the debris. A second cave around the corner was almost blocked by a large coral formation which came to within a foot or so of the surface, giving us just barely enough room to float over it to the deeper water inside. We poked and peered, dove and hovered. Finally we turned back toward Windom.

Before climbing out, we swam toward the bow to check the anchor. It was snugly buried to the shaft in sand, but our attention was quickly drawn to the dozens of conch which lay scattered around our anchor and chain. We'd anchored in a conch field!

Conch, needless to say, are considerably less wily to hunt than fish or lobster. They would probably be beaten by garden snails in a mollusk speed competition, and they don't have any spines or stingers or other defenses, relying instead on camouflage. Conch usually have grassy things growing from them, and they are more or less sand-colored, so they blend into the bottom. But conch-shaped bits of bottom are as good as purple neon signs for the observant cruiser. We picked out five of legal size and put them in a mesh bag to hang overboard for a later meal, since we still had leftover fish from Sampson Cay for dinner.

Since our dinghy range was so curtailed that we wouldn't be able to range far looking for snorkel spots, the next morning we decided to travel the remaining 35 miles to George Town. There, we hoped, we could get the outboard fixed; we also could do laundry, get our mail delivered, and do all the other things that civilization allows. Several boats we know are there, including friends we met last year who are flying down to spend a week on another friend's boat, so we had been planning on getting there within the next few days anyway.

We started getting the boat in order, putting things away, uploading the route to the GPS, and so on. Britt decided that instead of keeping the conch dangling in their bag while we were underway, he'd put them in a bucket, which he would then strap to the swim platform. The idea was that they'd be in the shade of the dinghy, hanging from the arch above. But somehow he ran the strap back and forth through the bucket handle so it wasn't actually fastened at all, and when we hoisted the dinghy it squeezed up against the bucket, flattening it to an oval, which then squirted with a "pop" between the dinghy and the boat, flying free and then landing in the water to float off, conch and all. I screamed. Britt screamed. Eventually we got the dinghy back down and unhooked, and Britt putted off at the necessary idle speed after the bucket, which slowly, but not slowly enough, sank under the weight of the conch, and disappeared.

It was a glum Britt who returned to the boat. The conch weren't the big deal -- but we only have two other buckets, and one of them is half-size and the other is our plexiglas-bottomed "look bucket". He wanted to go diving for the bucket, so he pulled on his snorkel gear, then I manned the dinghy and scanned the bottom with the look bucket, while he periodically jumped overboard to swim around and look.

We didn't find the bucket, but we did find a really nice reef. So nice that when we finally headed back to the boat, we decided we might as well stay for the day and snorkel the reef. We putted back to the reef, this time with wetsuits and weights and spears, and had ourselves a grand time shooting at fish. The operative word here is "shooting at", as these fish were for the most part far too spooky to get within range, although I hit a small snapper which managed to wriggle free of the spear as I was fishing it out of its cave, and Britt bagged a larger snapper. But we spent nearly three hours in the water, just enjoying the scenery. Several cowfish browsed among the coral heads -- they are weird-looking critters, triangular in cross-section -- and Britt saw a two-foot long puffer, another oddly shaped fish. A sand diver, flat against the bottom, slowly swallowed whole a bluestriped grunt as we watched; we weren't the only hunters out. I saw a small turtle, and a school of two dozen squid, and a little shark which cruised through, ignoring us completely.

Since we'd only gotten a single fish, when we got back to Windom I decided to dive for a few conch. As I swam down to the bottom, I noticed two triggerfish and two groupers swimming just behind the boat, and promptly changed my mind. I popped back up and called to Britt, "Hand me my spear!"  I couldn't get a good shot at the big grouper, but the bigger of the two triggerfish, true to stupid triggerfish fashion, obligingly presented itself as a target. It was big enough that when I shot it, it could still do a pretty good job of swimming off with my spear, and I had to chase after it, giving me a bit of a swim against the current to get back to the boat! Britt rapidly got his gear back on and jumped in, too, and soon he had the big grouper on the end of his spear.

We'd fulfilled our fish quota for the day, but we still had conch on our minds, so we put away our spears and did a little conch collecting. Each time we found a conch of legal size, we'd swim up and place it on the swim platform of the boat. First one, then another, and we were soon back up to five conch. Then Britt swam off a little farther, and darned if he didn't see a flash of white in the sand ahead. It was our lost bucket -- still full of conch!

So we didn't make it to George Town yet, and as a cold front has just come through, giving us a steady 25 knots of wind and whipping up breakers in the cut, we're going to have to wait here at Rudder Cut Cay for a few days. On the other hand, we got our bucket back, and we now have twice as much conch as we did before, plus an assortment of grouper, snapper, and triggerfish filets. There are no other boats (although a tiny floatplane visited the beach for a few hours yesterday), no sign of civilization here other than a mostly-hidden, apparently unoccupied house on the cay, and although we're getting a little bit of chop from the wind it's still a fairly comfortable anchorage. With no light pollution the night sky is extraordinary, with the stars remarkably brilliant, and Venus so luminous it casts a pale beam across the water. The other night we sat out on deck and identified constellations, picking out Leo and Gemini and Taurus and what turned out to be the Beehive cluster. Each star in the Pleiades was distinct, and Orion's bow, usually too dim to make out, was a clear arc of stars. And as we looked at Orion, a meteor streaked across the sky, a flaming arrow, right across the hunter's bow and into Taurus, his quarry.

No, we don't mind being stuck here. George Town can wait.