A Piece of Cake!

I conquered two fears today, and have learned to blow a conch shell successfully, after practicing for a week. J

One of the fears was the result of having overturned our dinghy (with me in it) last year, when I tried to stop behind someone else’s boat. I’ve been a little nervous about driving Small Change since then. But today, we needed food, and Jeff was too busy with other tasks to leave the boat. So off I went on my own to Little Farmer’s Cay – a fair dinghy ride away on a slightly rough sea.

I landed the boat successfully at the dock, and was rewarded by sighting stingrays, sharks, sea turtles, small fish and larger grouper – all around the boat! And the best part was meeting a local fisherman, who had been attracting these creatures with the remains of red snapper that he was cleaning, two of which he sold to me for our dinner tonight (see pic below). That trip ended with another successful docking at our boat on the way back – so now I trust my ability with the dink!

The second fear conquered was related to our miserable experience in crossing a cut the other day. Both of us took that wake-up call very seriously, and have been researching cut crossings since. Today we negotiated two different ones – leaving Little Farmer’s Cay, and entering Rat Cay – both a piece of cake, because we planned for the right timing of wind and tide.

In between, we had a delightful sail, and then motored for about 4 fours on fairly big waves to our current anchorage – where I managed to get a decent sound out of a conch shell (like blowing a trumpet – which I’ve never done). The tradition here is to blow your conch at sunset every night – resulting in a cacophony of somewhat eerie sounds bouncing around the harbor.

All in all, a very successful day, which ended with a gorgeous dinner of whole fried red snapper and a glorious sunset – what more could anyone want?