The Sea Provides--Good Eats by Hand, Hook, and Spear

We have been in the Bahamas just about two and a half months and with our last week of good hunting, we realized that we've had lots of sea-provided meals in a short time, especially when we consider just how long we have stayed in national parks during that time! 

We don't eat a lot of reef fish due to ciguatera risks and personal tastes (not to mention that Nassau grouper season doesn't open until March), so we focus on lobster, conch, and pelagic fish. Here's how it's been going so far!

We didn't start hunting until we hit the Exumas this year. First up, conch in Highbourne Cay! We failed to keep count how many over our two days there as we gave some to friends, tossed some back, and ate a few.

A sweet spot of ours south of Highbourne gave us our first lobsters! (J-1; T-1)

After several weeks in the no-take Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, we found conch near Black Point Settlement.

Woo hoo! Big lobster haul on the sound side near Black Point. This was way more than we needed so we gave one to a friend as all three boats represented on the hunt worked the reef hard! (J-3)

A quick conch snack at Rudder Cay.

Two lobsters out at the Brigantine Cays (F-1; T-1) and a few (I think 2 or 3?) conch from near Lee Stocking Island.

Whoa, conch! We had another great haul near Lee Stocking.

After some time in George Town (we don't usually hunt there as there is just too much going on and way too many other hunting boaters all going to the closest legal reefs) we got crabby in Calabash Bay, Long Island!

Calabash bay continued to provide lobster! We got three on this hunt, with Trent scoring this monster! (F-1; T-2)

Fish on! We finally hooked up on some mahi mahi in the deep water between Long Island and Conception Island.

And back at Conception Island we found a few more big guys! (J-1; T-1)

Wait, did I say we don't hunt when we're in George Town? Well, conditions were decent today and Trent wanted to spear with a buddy of his...SCORE! We had a lovely lobster dinner! (T-1)

We will continue to hunt, especially in March as it's the last month of lobster season, but also the start of Nassau Grouper season! Can't wait to see how we do as the menu shifts more to fish!

~Jo, 1st Mate

Black Point 3.0

We're back! Third time here, third version of the Black Point experience! You can relive our first two experiences at Black Point Settlement--A Perfect Mix of Quiet and Activity and Black Point 2.0.

This time weather kept us here for over a week, bouncing between the main anchorage and Little Bay to the south of the point a few times. There were very few boats for most of our time there, but we did manage to enjoy the usual treats--easy laundry with a view, easy trash, Scorpio's rum punch, Lorraine's good eats, Lorraine's mom's delicious bread, Dashamon's good eats, Aderly's grocery (fresh romaine and eggs!!!), and smiling faces. But we had a few standout experiences!

$36 in groceries, drinks at Scorpio's, and the best laundry view I've found as a cruiser.

While enjoying a few rum punches at Scorpio's a local noted that we had the same handheld VHF radio he had and asked if we could charge his. We took his radio, gave him a boat card, and a few days later (after a big blow) Jason swung by the boat to retrieve his radio and thanked us. It's so easy to just help each other down here!

Happy to help a neighbor!

We also had a nice walk/trash pick-up at the blow hole on a windy day, got to see lots of rainbows as rain squalls came through, collected a few nice conch, met up with friends for some successful lobster hunting, and hunkered down for a strong front passage with three of our friend boats. We only had one day where Trent got to hang out with other kids, but he had fun and it was nice to reconnect with the parents, too! 

A walk, a blow hole, collecting trash, and...rainbows!

Frank and Trent found conch!

I did well on our snorkeling/spearing outing with S/V Traveler and S/V Tangent!

Navigation note: we knew that we would have strong west winds as the front passed and there are very few places that actually have westerly protection in the Exuma Cays. Rather than crowd into one of those few places with several other boats, we opted to stay somewhere with very good holding and plenty of room to spread out. Black Point also allowed us to easily go "around the corner" to Little Bay for some more protection as winds went north of west. We had a few hours of strong winds and waves rolling in, but we held well and had plenty of sea room.

Lehe Paine, Tangent, Traveler, and Makae before the storm.

We also celebrated a big birthday for our Captain! Because a front came through on the night before/early morning of his birthday he got to stretch his festivities over two days as spoiled him with food and relaxation as much as we could!

HBD, Skipper!

Surf & Turf! We also made him a NC breakfast and lobster rolls on homemade buns.

Trent made the rum cake!

We are southbound again! If you are keeping track and are familiar with this area you may be wondering, "Did they stop in Staniel Cay?" Not this year! We decided that Black Point had what we needed and was what we were all feeling like right now. 

I took a long walk on the east side of Great Guana Cay to watch waves.

~Jo, 1st Mate

Let's talk CONCH

We have mentioned it before and talked about hunting for conch, but what the heck is it and how do we eat it? 

The conch we are after in the Bahamas are Queen Conch, "Stombus gigas," a species of edible sea snail with beautiful shells. We tend to find them near seagrass beds in pretty shallow water (less than 20') on the banks. We aren't looking for pretty pink shells out there, but rather shells with a bit of growth on them. But what is the most important thing we are looking for? Shells with a well-formed flaring lip are the only ones that are legal for harvest as these are "mature" conch. It doesn't necessarily matter if the shell is big as long as the lip is well-formed with a clear flare. That may sound a little vague, but once you start looking at a lot of conch it gets pretty easy to decide if a conch is adolescent or mature. Conch have been overfished in recent years so we are also very conscious about only collecting what we will eat right now--we don't collect a ton and freeze them. 

A mature Queen Conch

Getting them is as easy as picking them up! No special gear needed! In face, it's actually illegal to get the conch using SCUBA gear. Getting them out of the shell is the slightly harder part, but with practice it gets easier. Frank is actually pretty darn fast with extracting them and cleaning them now and happily shows fellow cruisers how it's done. The tools--a rock hammer/hammer/hatchet, a butter knife, and a sharp knife. The hammer (claw end if it's a regular hammer) is used to make a hole between the 2nd and 3rd row of spires from the top of the shell. Then you slide the butter knife into the hole, scraping down the inner wall of the shell to separate the muscle from the shell. After that, you just grab the conch's foot and yank it out! Ok, there's a bit of suction to overcome so it's not quite that easy, but it's not too hard! Then you use the sharp knife to take off the head, guts, foot...anything that's not white meat. And ta-da, you're ready to eat conch!

Collecting conch on a shallow skin dive.

Cleaning the conch! The boys have the extraction process well in hand. The bottom pic is the conch bodies before they are cleaned.

But how does one eat conch? The most popular preparations for our crew are conch fritters, conch salad, and cracked conch. I haven't made conch fritters, but that's just because I'm not a huge fan of deep frying anything so I save those for when we are out to eat on one of the islands. But I do make conch salad and cracked conch!

Conch salad is basically conch ceviche. Our dear friend Ronnie Brown, owner of Brown's Garden on Great Harbour Cay, was happy to share his preparation with us! The basic conch salad is conch, salt, white onion, green bell pepper, tomatoes, sour orange, lime, and a bit of goat pepper for some heat. Basically the conch and veggies get diced, it all gets salted and juiced, and after a minute or two your lunch is ready! It's bright, tasty, and healthy! Sometimes we don't have all the ingredients and have to go with something a little simpler, like scorch conch. Scorch conch is prepared with bigger pieces of conch (so the end result is a little chewier), onion, citrus juice, salt, and goat pepper if you're feeling spicy (go for it!). Simple and delicious!

Simple ingredients make a delightful salad! When we don't have goat pepper on hand, I use a few shakes of a Bahamian hot sauce (made with goat peppers) to spice it up.

Our youngest crew member isn't a huge conch salad fan so I'll also make cracked conch every now and then. Cracked conch is basically fried conch. The meat is tenderized a lot with a meat mallet, then breaded and fried. I use an egg dredge and a panko breading seasoned with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then just pan fry for a few minutes. I like to serve it with a dipping sauce of some sort (horseradish, mayo, ketchup, black pepper is good), too.

Tenderized conch gets dredged in egg and bread crumbs before getting fried to a golden brown.

So that's a little about one of our favorite Bahamian foods...hope you consider giving it a try!

~Jo, 1st Mate