Allan’s Cay – Conch Hunting, Boat Cleaning, Beach Fire

Norman’s Cay to Allan’s Cay – 13 nautical miles sailed, 5 miles in dinghy, 500 metres snorkelled, 6 conch

Today would be Stella’s last in the Family Islands so we decided to return to Allan’s Cay, the first island we anchored at in the Exumas. It did not disappoint, and I would say this is my favourite anchorage in the Exumas. It has it all – snorkelling, beach combing, beach fire spots, iguanas, superb snorkelling, conch and lobsters, sharks, and good wind protection. Yes, there are tourist boats who stop a couple times per day to see and feed the iguanas, but seeing them is fun in itself.

We arrived around 10:30 am and I went out to see if I could find some new snorkelling spots as the Atlantic side showed lots of ground structure on the charts and wasn’t too horribly wavy. I dinghy’d out to a nearby island and zero’d in on a large black patch of water then anchored nearby it. There I found an incredible and fairly small coral reef with hordes of fish and colorful coral plus dozens of conch lounging in the nearby grassy sand bottom. I found five beautiful large adults and put them in my bucket then succeeded in finding a single lobster and tickling him out of his hole with the tip of my spear (this is done by diving close to them, sliding a long pole beneath them and gently tickle their underside back legs, which they seem to hate, and will crawl out of their hole and into the open to escape the tickling). Sadly, when I tried to deliver the death blow I was quickly running out of air, and flubbed the shot. Each of my failures teaches me a bit more about spiny lobster hunting and I feel I’m getting better…but not quite there yet.

After snorkelling for a while longer, but deciding not to take any of the many available fish there, I glimped a shark in the distance and decided to push on and try to find another site, which I did along the banks of another nearby rocky island. I did not get in the water for this one, instead just scoped it out from the boat by dipping my head in the water and looking around.

I returned to the boat, cleaned the conch and packed them in the freezer, had lunch with the girls, then we all went back out snorkelling. They loved the spots I’d found, and at the first one we had a prowling barracuda – a real big one, maybe 25 to 30 pounds – and Stella was thrilled to see it as she hadn’t yet seen one underwater. At the second we saw a giant sunfish as well as thousands of other fish of many varieties. We then returned to a spot we’d found here on our first stop, and absolutely first class snorkelling location, nearly inside the anchorage. I picked up one more beautiful conch there, put her in a bucket with seawater, and decided to keep her as a pet with the name Princess Concholopolous. She’s going to love it back in Paris.

Back at the boat I decided it was time to give the underside a cleaning. Little crusty sea creatures had begun sticking themselves to the hull and there was a bit of flowing green algae hair in some spots. So with my drywall trowel scraper and a brush I went to work, taking deep breaths, then swimming upside down beneath the boat, scraping the entire surface, while keeping my inverted peripheral vision on alert for sharks. We saw several sharks last time we were here, particularly after I had been cleaning conch on the back of the boat and tossing in the guts. By the end of the job I was completely spent so I dragged myself back onto the boat and sat on the swim platform resting and chatting with Princess Concholopolous, who seemed to be really happy in her new bucket home.

This is birthday week so we made a couple of calls, one to my brother Marty who turned 50 (and my nephew Leif who turned 18) and one to our buddy Andrew who is just one little year behind him. Party Marty’s having a party this Saturday at their house in Chelsea, Quebec and my whole immediate family is going to be there plus some of the highly dangerous cousins so I’m sad to be missing the shindig, especially since they all turned out for my old school backyard 50th a couple of years ago. Andrew and his partner Victoria were in Toronto for the weekend, keeping the birthday celly’s low key, but he did recruit Ana to plan his 50th next year and is hoping to pop down to see us for a couple days somewhere along our trip to discuss pertinent details.

Though we knew it would be impossible to replicate the magical, unexpected, impromptu, and perfect evening beach fire and dinner we had with new friends the last time we were here, we gave it a weak try. We gathered some wood from the island then dinghy’d over to the closest four anchored boats and invited them to a campfire. There was enthusiastic, but utterly non-convincing nods received from all invitees, and sure enough, nobody showed, which was okay with us, as we had a lovely evening on the beach, under the stars and three-quarter moon, with a fire, great music, cold drinks, and peaceful conversation.