All I can say, is it is good we are not dependent on our hunting and gathering skills for our food!
Our friends on S/V Moon Shadow had some guests fly in for the week and they were very interested in fishing while they were here. It turns out that this has nothing to do with rods, or lures or anything that most of us think of when we think of going fishing. This is fishing up close and personal with the fish using a pole spear. We had heard there was good fishing and lobstering near Rat Cay and Leaf Cay so off we went with S/V Moon Shadow and S/V Runa. Our friends on S/V Moon Shadow have lived and cruised on boats for years, raising their kids and home schooling for a few years even so we figured they were the perfect people to teach us some spear fishing skills.
We had another great sail from George Town north to Rat Cay where we did some more traditional fishing on the way trailing two fishing lines in the water. We tried to sail along the ledge between the deep ocean and relatively more shallow depths closer to shore, but none of us hooked anything.
Once anchored, we dinghied around with our homemade “look bucket” (bucket with a plexiglass bottom that works kind of like a giant snorkel mask and allows you to see the bottom clearly while dipping it into the water from the comfort of your dinghy), but didn’t see any coral reefs that seemed worth getting in the water for. Our friends went around the point in search of lobster but didn’t find anything either. It was chicken again for dinner that night, but we all got together on one of the boats and had a pot luck and played a game so it was a lot of fun.
The next day we headed north again and had a picture perfect sail with flat seas (7+ knots of speed! ) and tucked in south of Leaf Cay. There was an excellent reef there with lots of fish, but David and I struck out with our spear fishing. The pole spear has a big rubber band on one end and a 4 pronged spike on the other. The idea is to get the pointy end very close to a fish or lobster before releasing the rubber band so you can’t miss. Well we are really good at hitting coral, but not fish…actually, we did manage to nick a couple, but nothing that actually stuck. One of the fish I nicked darted away and then came back and looked at me as if to say “Hey, what was that about?” I felt like I had hurt his feelings.
Our friends did catch a couple good size lobsters and a couple smaller fish and we shared dinner once again (lobster fritters, mmmmm!) on our boat with another pot luck. We had eight people eat dinner below and it was actually comfortable. It was Valentine’s Day so we also celebrated with champagne and brownies!
To find lobsters, you swim along ledges and places where there are rocks for the lobsters to hide under and you look for their tentacles sticking out. Then you need to dive down and use the pole spear to spear them. These lobsters have no claws, so it is pretty low risk to just grab them, but most people still use their spears. Lobsters don’t move as fast as fish and they are usually backed up into a hole so if you find some tentacles, there is a good chance you will catch a lobster. We tried to find lobster the next day, but it was too rough in the areas where the lobster would be. David and I took the opportunity to practice hitting coral instead of fish with our pole spear. On the swim back to the dinghy, we saw a large barracuda so we were just fine with not having a fish on the end of our spear!
One of the less attractive fish on the reef:
Given our lack of success with fish, we decided to try our hand at things on land. Some other friends had asked us to bring them back some coconuts since we were near an island with lots of them. We dinghied over (we spend a lot of time in our dinghy) and found lots of dried up brown ones on the ground. You look for brown coconuts that have liquid in them and you shake them to know they are good. David learned an important lesson the previous day about shaking coconuts next to your ear to see if there is liquid in them. He picked one up on the beach not realizing it had a hole in it and shook it hard right next to his ear. The foulest smelling liquid you can imagine came out and covered his head and shirt pretty well. He smelled like he went swimming in a septic tank. Repeated submerging in the water finally made him smell only a little worse than normal.
We did finally find quite a few “good” ones and loaded up our dinghy and headed back to the boat for tools. We picked up a hammer, a cats paw (small crowbar), big screwdriver, and a machete and headed back to the beach to try to open one of the coconuts.
Apparently there is some skill required to open coconuts and we haven’t acquired it yet. David spent about 20 minutes chopping with the machete, tugging with the cat’s paw and throwing it on the hard coral out of frustration before we were finally able to peel away the hard thick hairy covering to reveal the nut. We figured he expended more calories doing that than are in the coconut meat, if we ever find a way to get into the small hard nut!
Needless to say, we are glad we have access to small grocery stores every few weeks!