Continued from the 1/1/22 entry
Lets go back to our second day. When we arrived at Black Sound, I saw a beautiful blue-hull Nor’west 33 moored near me. On one of our runs back to shore, we dinghied near and said hi to the ginger singlehanded sailor. His name was Robert. He is a contract welder that has worked on some really cool jobs, including navy Submarines, and he was thirty-two years old. And just as I was when I was single-handing, he was really eager to have friends to do activities with. Past few days, the three of us spent a lot of time together.
The official Junkanoo for new year’s was canceled. I knew this because I had emailed the ministry of tourism a few days ahead of time. But on our second day in New Plymouth, locals were whispering about a Junkanoo at five in the afternoon on that day. An illicit Junkanoo! Very cool. I stood next to a food and drinks place called the Wrecking Tree, looking down into the beautiful bay, standing there with locals, visitors and cruisers. Everyone was drinking. Even the well-behaved teenagers were drinking. I could hear the beats a few blocks away, and eventually folks walked by our location. I was surprised that most people participating in the parade itself were wearing masks. Visitors, not so much. I actually jumped in for a few meters! Young children led the parade, lazily coordinating their moves with each other, black and white alike.
The primary activity to do with Robert is reef diving and spearfishing. One day, we braved the choppy waters and took Rob’s bigger dinghy out to No Name Cay, just a few miles southeast of Green Turtle Cay. We cobbled together our anchor rode to make a really long one and brought my small claw anchor along. After a few minutes fiddling with our fins, weight, snorkel and spear, we jumped in. A quick splash is what separates us from a different universe beneath. The bubbles cleared and revealed twenty feet of water under me and beautiful white sand. We swam towards the reef together, both of us with our pole-spears in hand.
Here is something interesting about reef diving. Visibility, even in clear water, isn’t as good as what you see on land. The details get better as you swim closer to the reef. It is sort of like playing a video game. To save on computing power, various objects don’t get populated in a video game until the player is closer to them. Swimming towards a reef isn’t that much different. I snorkeled above the reef for a while and enjoyed the sights below — an expanse of vibrant colors and motion, tantalizing me with a promise of an entirely different world. The dead reef in Grand Bahama Island was nothing compared to this. Although the reef was only a few hundred yards long, from our perspective, it seemed to reach out forever.
I finally took a big deep breath and did my duck dive. To do this, I get my legs up above me with my head pointing down. Then I extend my hand out in front of me, except I keep the spear hand by my side. The weight of my legs above the water pushes me down and I relax as much as I can. Every few seconds I flex some muscles in my head to equalize. I am lucky. I can often equalize without pinching my nose. When I get past fifteen feet or so, I have to let out a little bit of air into my mask. I slowly kick to propel myself down, conserving energy.
The world beneath me opens up as they objects get populated in my new, temporary reality. There are invertebrates such as anemones, sponges, soft coral and plants everywhere. The colors aren’t as vibrant as the ones you see on documentaries of the pacific reefs, but they are still amazingly beautiful. As I continue my decent, I pass my neutral buoyancy depth that I had set and I am now gliding in weightlessness. The world opens up even more before my eyes. Fish of all sizes and colors are darting around, some running, some circling the center of my vision, and others curious. I swam a bit more horizontally and found a sand patch in between the coral. There was a big, blueish gray stingray sitting boldly at the surface of the sand. Well armed, it seemed to know that it didn’t have a worry in the world. Schoolmaster snapper, with their vibrant yellow stripes, shimmer as they go by, and much of the soft polyps are waving as the current gently passes through them. It was so beautiful that I wanted to cry.
The sight was such a shock to me that I couldn’t focus on doing a good dive. I made it up before my convulsions even start, and took a breath. I do a few more quick dives to look around, including under rocks and crevices this time. Fish hide there, but I don’t see any lobster. At some point, I swam back towards the tender and dove down to the full twenty feet of depth, just to see what that was like. It was cool. I briefly sat on a bed of white sand and looked up at the shape of the boat, wile the rays of the sun danced all around me. The seabed, which had looked like a carpet this whole time, looked more terrestrial from that perspective. With sightseeing out of the way, I shifted my focus. It was time to hunt.
One problem I have is that I’m not knowledgeable about reef fish. Most of my knowledge is from angling, and even then, I know more about pacific fish in San Diego. For some part, a lot of edible fish have a certain shape. Something thick, often with a big mouth. Like snapper or grouper. Or some sort of jack –sleek, vaguely pelagic looking, with symmetrical fins top and bottom. I’ve also had some mounting anxiety because I felt bad about the idea of killing fish. They just look so beautiful, and even from my short time in the reef, I could tell they were much smarter than most people think. I’ve also never shot my spear before. Will this attract sharks? A lot of thoughts ran through my head.
I snorkeled around closer to the reef and saw a fish that looked pretty edible. It looked decently big. It was sort of mindlessly moving towards me. I could probably dive right on top of it without spooking it. I loaded up my spear, which I do by holding the rubber band in the web of my thumb, pushing the spear back past my elbow, add a bit of twist and holding the middle of the spear. I did my duck dive and descended above it. All of my worries vanished. It was instinctual, and only focus remained. ‘Get a lot closer than I think I need,’ I thought to myself. I pointed the spear right at it, and barely aiming, but with a vague goal to hit it in the head, I let the spear fly. Plunk! The sound it made sounded just like the sound I heard on spearfishing videos. I feel a satisfying vibration on my hand as my spear entered the fish. I hit my mark. Right at the top quarter of its head. The fish flopped once or twice, and then it was out cold. My very first spear shot was a head-shot.
I tried my best to suppress my excitement, but that only worked for my ascent. I took a breath at the surface and started swimming back. Robert was near by watching the whole affair and followed me back to the boat. Apparently there was a trail of scales and bits of flesh, which is pretty much a shark attractant. I handed over the spear to Alec and flopped back on the boat. The swim back was harder than it should have been, undoubtedly from how excited I was.
I took a break and let Alec use my fins. I looked at the little fish and thought back on my very first underwater hunting kill. So the whole process from ‘stalk’ to ‘knock’ was almost automatic. I’d never hunted animals before, and I guess that hunting instinct was hard-coded in a lot of us. I felt no remorse, and the focus I experienced was best described as ‘primal.’ And I thought that the reason my shot was accurate was because I didn’t really think about it. That, and that I have good body awareness. I basically spent a few minutes feeling really good about myself when I realized how small this fish was.
I knew it wasn’t a big fish, but it definitely looked bigger under water. Poor thing. Still, it was big enough for a meal. I was glad I wasn’t in an area that had minimum size requirements. Turns out this fish was a parrotfish, which is an abundant reef fish that only the locals eat. Its also a risky fish for ciguatera poisoning, since it eats coral. In a sense it was good that it was so small, because smaller fish hadn’t had the time to accumulate the ciguatera toxins.
Alec finally came back and we chatted a bit. We were starting to get tired, and Robert was starting to worry about the sharks. They can sense all of the commotion and bits of fish from miles away. I got my fins back and decided to go for a long solo swim before we left. I went up and down the reef and enjoyed looking at the incredible diversity of life. I looked at various nooks and crannies, hoping for a lobster. I decided to swim back towards the sandy bottom. Some of the bigger jacks seemed to hang out there. I saw a school of three or four fish, perhaps sixteen feet below. I wanted to see what they were, so I did my duck dive.
One of them swam a bit closer to me. Its much bigger than the parrotfish, and the big mouth made it look familiar. It was a grouper! I brought up my spear and took aim and started to swim towards it. When I thought I was close enough, I swam a bit closer. My body is still vertical at this point. I adjusted my aim towards its head, just around the gills. That is when the grouper decided that its curiosity had run out. As it turned away, in a bit of a panic, I let the spear fly. This time, there wasn’t a satisfying thump. The spear passed through a fleshy part of the fish. It fought a bit longer than the parrotfish and caused a bit of a drag for my ascent. But I had got the grouper! I wanted to get back to the dinghy before a shark stole my fish, so I kicked a bit harder than I should have and burned too much oxygen. I was almost out of breath when I broke the surface.
Oh boy. It was a real mother trying to haul the fish back. I was kicking hard, using my free arm to do strokes. I felt like I was barely making progress with these stupid snorkeling fins. The folding barb held the fish solidly in place but I wasn’t sure how hard the fish was fighting me. I remembered all those long distance swims I did at the pool and patiently kept swimming. It did not help that the waves kept going over my snorkel, interrupting my already labored breathing. I had to pop my head up to take breaths.
Thank goodness I had friends on the boat. I handed over the fish and spear to Alec and Robert, who had been watching me. Their jaws dropped when they saw my fish emerge from the water. I was absolutely spent. My legs ached, and it took longer than I wanted to flop back onto the boat. My friends were admiring the fish, but I was still catching my breath. My catch had mean looking eyes and its large mouth. It certainly evolved to swallow a disproportionately big prey. Its a grouper alright. Later, I found out it was an Atlantic black grouper, which is good because the similar but differently colored Nassau grouper was out of season and illegal to take. Apparently, the locals had fished too many of them.
We stopped by lobster crate but found it to be cleaned out. People probably harvested all the lobster for the new years celebrations. We endured a bumpy, wet dinghy ride back to Black sound, eager to start working on the fish we took before they spoiled. Fortunately, Robert has a fridge on his boat. Alec did his usual cooking magic and made some fish head soup and fillets. I’m not a big fan of fish broth, so I ate the fillets. It was so good that I didn’t even realize I was eating the less tasty parrotfish. How lucky am I to be cruising with Alec. A wave of satisfaction washed over me as I sat in Rob’s boat, eating the results of my hunt. We all sat there on Lena Rae, Rob’s boat, sipping on rum and eating fish.
As we had the prior few days, we hit the town and talked to some more people our age. I remember looking at some women who were resort-vacationers from the United States. I caught myself staring at them, only then realizing how deprived I was from the company of the opposite gender. No wonder sailors of the old times made up absolutely bat-shit crazy stories about mermaids and sirens. In my head, one of them was the most beautiful girl on the island. She’d continuously dip in and out of my sight the next few days as we walked around town, though eventually I did muster up the courage to talk to her. We told her and her friends about our spearfishing experience while the landlocked Ohioans listened to us wide-eyed. I was just happy that cute girls were lending us their ear, much to the contrast of the harder-to-please city-Jerry from an era that seemed to be an eternity in the past.
I had to do some work on my laptop and I didn’t feel like doing it on my boat. One day, me and Alec decided to walk the two miles to the fancy resorts near white sound, except that a local picked us up on his truck. I’d never hitchhiked before in my life. Hitchhiking would be a common experience for the rest of this trip. Yes, Bahamians are really nice indeed.
Its hard to find leafy greens anywhere in the Bahamas. They don’t transport well, and they don’t grow here. But some of the resorts and marinas have access to them. And this island has a guy who keeps a hydroponics garden. At Island Greens Farm, you can go clip whatever vegetables and herbs you’d like, and pay for them by weight. Maybe this resort gets their fresh greens from here. The staff at the resort wasn’t that friendly. I think when I’m wearing a tank top like I was, they aren’t that nice to me. Bahamians appreciate conservative clothing. They are also not nice to you if you don’t have a mask on your person or near you, even if you are at an outdoor patio.
Alec doesn’t like that, which makes sense since having a mask around but not wearing it is the same as not having a mask. I could see that being annoying. But I don’t mind. I’m in their country and it is their pandemic custom. Besides, its a step closer to doing the right thing. I just put mine on every time a waiter or waitress comes by. It might also be that we’re younger and thus, less respectable. Alec is thirty, but he can pass for twenty-five. I’m thirty-six, but I can pass for thirty. Besides, even the coldest Bahamian staff get nicer after you talk to them a little bit. But I actually think its my tank top. I’ll try dressing a bit more respectable next time. Either way, I needed a few hours of solid, laptop time to pump out some work and it was worth it paying over twenty dollars for a burger and a salad. Once again, to the contrast of a less heathy city-Jerry, I really enjoyed having fresh vegetables.
Slightly bad weather was rolling in. On the horizon, there were some low level thunderclouds, but without the scary vertical element. Well, it’ll still be calm underwater, right? We decided to hoof it to a nearby beach with our fins and go reef diving again. No hunting this time – it is illegal to take game within two hundred meters of land. There was a wave breaking coral head outside the cove, and we were on the lee side of the winds, so it shouldn’t get that rough. Sure enough, the little cove was very calm. We swam around for a bit over an hour while Alec enjoyed a stroll along this beautiful beach. It was a good chance to keep working on our breath-hold while also enjoying the company of marine life. I think I got up to a minute at some point. But I won’t time my breath-holds. Knowing me, pushing myself under water is what will take me to a watery grave.
We finished the last of the grouper that night, chatted a bit about how we were getting island fever. By island fever, I mean something like Cabin Fever. We’d been in Green Turtle Cay for a while now, and we all missed sailing. We planned out our mini-excursion for the next day. It was gonna be cool- Sonora‘s mooring would be reserved by tying up my zodiac to it. Sonora herself, would be sailed to Powell Cay, an uninhabited island that I had skipped in the rush to get to Green Turtle Cay. We’d gather some firewood on the beach and hopefully cook some lobster. Sleep on the boat, come back in time to drop off Alec so that he could catch a ferry to Marsh Harbour, where his return trip to Florida would begin. I was going to miss that kid dearly when he is gone.
Junkanoo – A Junkanoo is “Junkanoo is a street parade with music, dance, and costumes of mixed African origin in many islands across the English speaking Caribbean every Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.”*
Minimum Size Requirements – Many places in the US have a minimum size requirement for taking fish, just so smaller fish have a chance to spawn. That being said, the smarter thing to do is to have brackets of minimum and maximum sizes, as larger fish spawn much more eggs.
Lobster Crate – Locals will drop a wooden crate into the water, held down by some sort of weight, typically a cinder block. During night time, lobster will leave their hiding spots and roam around in search of food. When they come across this crate, they will take shelter in it. The Bahamian government has decreed that lobster crates are fair game for anyone who comes across it. These crates are more commonly known as ‘lobster condos’
Island Greens Farm – The man who ran Island Greens Farm was Mr. Anthony ‘Chris’ Farrington. He passed away in July 2022. Rest in peace.