Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Farmers Cay - My First Lobster!


Black Point – 12 nautical miles sailed, 3 miles in dinghy, 1 kilometer snorkelled, 1 lobster caught

If we ever wanted to clear the boat of flying insects we were going to have to leave Black (Fly) Point, so we did just that shortly after 8am. We traveled the inside route this time on the Exuma Banks and the water was calm and easy to navigate. The approach to Farmers Cay was quite shallow, and despite being at half tide we still had less than two feet under the keel at times, but we managed to squeak in and anchored ourselves at the southeast corner of Little Farmers Cay. This anchorage sits at the junction of three islands – Little Farmers Cay, Big Farmers Cay, and Great Guana Cay and is very well protected from winds in every direction. It was a mere 12 mile run which left plenty of time in the day for exploring.


We sort of forgot to feed the girls yesterday and the SeaLight Adventurer Package they had purchased for the trip included all meals, unlimited alcohol, free laundry services, wake up calls (no earlier than noon), complimentary dinghy transport, day trips, iced coffee on demand, unlimited snacks, pillow fluffing, nightly ukulele serenades, and foot rubs, so we felt like we weren’t keeping up our end of the deal on the food side of things. Thus, we made a huge breakfast to make up for it, in the hopes they would not lodge a complaint with Corporate. Breakfast sausages (recently liberated from the frozen ice block in our freezer), hot baked beans, over-easy eggs, juice, and Texas toast, served in the cockpit with the magnificent backdrop of a beach and mostly deserted island. They seemed satisfied.


The Noforeignland app showed an airplane wreck on the other side of the island so we packed the dinghy to the rim with snorkelling gear, a beach umbrella, towels, snacks, speaker, and a bag full of other stuff (minimalists, we are not), then somehow jammed ourselves in around the edges and set off at a painfully slow pace around the island as the Tohatsu 9.8 groaned and worked. We landed on a nearby beach and set up Away Base, adjacent to a landing strip (which explains the sunken plane) and a restaurant, which looked very closed.

I grabbed a mask and fins and set out to survey the area. It was mainly sand, with a narrow strip of sea grass and rock which was home to some fish, but not swarms of them. Further out was more sand and the dark patches I saw on our way in, expecting coral, was just boring sea grass. I did a large loop and of course the not so friendly neighbourhood barracuda paid me a visit, but fortunately he was a singleton and didn’t bring his punk-ass friends with him. I was still a little spooked from yesterday so I kept one eye on him and one on the beach (little trick I learned from a Peruvian zoo chameleon years ago) as I made my way back in.


I picked up Stella and we went out to try and find the plane wreck but we could not locate it, so instead we went snorkeling in a different area, but again didn’t see too many fish, although we did come across a turtle and followed him around for a while. Ana and I then went back out in the direction we came, but again didn’t find anything interesting to snorkel so returned to the beach, explored the closed restaurant grounds, walked a bit, then decided to head back to the boat as it was getting very hot outside - 25 degrees but it felt much hotter with the direct sunshine.

The return trip seemed to take half the time, despite the engine sputtering out twice, reminding me I need to either clean the carburetor or run more Sea Foam through the engine. I went back out in the dinghy myself, determined to find a good snorkelling spot, and hopefully catch something for dinner. The dinghy engine again conked out a couple of times, which gave me pause, then it started running okay so I went through the cut to reach the outside Exuma Sound area of the island, but it was rough as hell. There was a small rocky outcropping with deep water just off the island which I was hoping to get to, but the large swells, rough waves, and tricky standing waves in the cut made me reconsider my plan and I turned around. I anchored the dinghy near a rock wall approaching the cut, dove in, and found a spectacular stretch of coral, full of fans, elk horns, sponges, brain coral, many fish, and only a weak current. I carried my spear, looking for something significant to shoot and swam the length of the wall before coming across a rocky ledge that revealed not just a lionfish, but two lobster antennae poking out! I locked the rubber band into my thumb, pulled back on the spear, then released it. It went straight into a rock with a "ping!", assuring the fish there was no danger from this rookie. Surprisingly, the lionfish did not move, so I reloaded, took better aim, and shot my spear straight through his body. The lobster seemed interested in this development and exposed his beautiful self for a shot so I shook the lionfish off, who gently swam away a few feet, not realizing he had just been mortally wounded, then took aim at the lobster and shot. The spear simply bounced off its Spiny Caribbean Lobster head and it retreated hastily into the safe space beneath the rocks, out of reach. As this was my first lobster hunt, I really didn’t know what I was doing, so I tried pulling him out by the antennae, coaxing him out with the wounded lionfish, whistling underwater, doing the “come hither” motion with my index finger, but I could not get him out. As I was about to give up, he appeared. I tried to grab him with my hand and he took off flicking his tail, scurrying backwards. I followed him, tried jamming the spear into his head, shot at it a couple more times to no effect, then kept on him as he moved into deeper and deeper water. As I was floating, pondering my next move, I looked down to see another lobster sticking out of a hole, half exposed, and not nearly as freaked out as the one I’d been chasing, so I dove down and pinged my spear off its head to no effect (I am a slow learner). The first lobster gave me the slip as I was now fully focused on this one. I tried and tried but just could not get him, and the first one was long gone so I was devastated. I might have cried a little bit in my mask, but the tears just mixed in with the ocean water caught in there so you probably couldn’t tell.


After twenty minutes trying to extract the second loster, I was about to give up when the first lobster suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision. I gave it one last try, aiming at his tail. The spear went right through it and I pulled him up. Success! I swam with my first lobster kill back to the dinghy, dropped it into the bucket, put on my lobstering gloves (which I had forgotten on the first go-round) and went back in, emboldened with my success and now knowing what to look for. I almost immediately spotted another one, antennae sticking out from beneath a rock ledge. I tried pulling him out with my gloves, but this ledge was deeper and it disappeared from view. After surfacing for a fresh breath, I went back down and stuck my head right into the space, saw a few little fish, and the end of an antennae, way back. It was unreachable. I went back up to the surface to ponder my next move and looked down to see a big fat blue and white eel pop its scary head out from a rock just beside where my face had previously been. Eel was not on the menu, and I didn’t want my finger or lips to be on its menu, so I got back into the dinghy and moved it over to the first spot with the lobster in the hole, and worked that one again for a while, in the process ripping off half of one of its antennae as I tried to extract it from its hiding spot. I felt terrible and had to abandon the mission. I also tried to locate the wounded lionfish and found the spot where I had left him but he was nowhere to be found.

I returned to the boat with my victory lobster and a smile a mile wide. Ana gave me a hero’s welcome, then informed me that while I was gone, they had done a deep cleaning on the inside of the boat, removing all the nasty moisture from the past couple of days. After depositing the lobster in the kitchen sink, I took the bucket and helped Ana clean the outside deck of the boat. SeaLight was looking good again.


After the work was done, I turned my attention to the lobster, and with Stella’s internet research and guidance, I twisted the tail right off, cut through the shell, then removed the anal vein and had a lovely, large chunk of lobster meat which we slathered with a mixture of butter, garlic, pepper, and fresh lime, then broiled in the oven for fifteen minutes. I presented the lobster appetizer, on a plate, cut into pieces, with four forks. The crew loved it.

To make a good day even better, the girls offered to make supper, so Ana and I sat back as they prepared a delicious pasta and meat sauce dish, then we enjoyed a nice dinner in the cabin to the sounds of the girls’ playlist and the water sloshing against the hull.

Another fine day in the Exumas.

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