Black Point & Beyond

We have been moving slowly south in the Exuma Chain, stopping at Black Point, White Point and are now currently at Little Farmers Cay. Black Point and White Point are both on Great Guana Cay. Black Point is a large, for the Bahamas. settlement supporting a local community. It is basically a one road town. Very friendly to cruisers with the best Bahamian bread yet. White Point is sans settlement but had some very nice coral and beaches nearby. Little Farmers was essentially founded by four people several generations ago, with most of the current population descendants of these four people. A small community but very inviting. Most importantly with a good east side anchorage to wait out the current cold front and its westerly winds. From here south the bank side of the Bahamas begin to run out of water so to speak. We were sailing in about 8 feet of water, near high tide, yesterday with our 6.7 foot draft. So from Little Farmers we will go out into Exuma sound for a run down to Georgetown, about 40 miles to the SE. This is usually a manageable distance for us, however, it seems somewhat intimidating right now as it will be about 8 times longer than any passage we have had in the last six weeks! Oh how we have been spoiled by this section of the Exuma chain.

Jake tried swimming sans life jacket off the back of the boat while we were in Black Point. I went in with him showing him how to tread water. He was able to start swimming without much fuss. Now he believes after one afternoon that he is an expert so we now need a very careful eye that he just does not jump in.

On the spear fishing front, our technique (Hammish from Free@Last and myself) continues to improve as does the variety of our catch. I am still using a spear without tip, so more or less bludgeoning the fish. The downside of this approach is that I loose my share if I hit them in a non-fatal place, like the lower belly, as they can easily slide off, being there is no spear tip with barb to hold them. Just increases the degree of difficulty. Our catch list now includes, sting ray, lobster, trigger fish and grouper. Of the fish, while the trigger is held to be the best tasting, our current vote is for the grouper, which we prepared by rolling them in a spiced flour and lightly frying. The lobster was a close second. We have also started to purge lion fish. Lion fish are very interesting, almost seeming to have feathers that fan out, are a very nice black and white color, one might suggest beautiful. They are also extremely poisonous and not native to the Bahamas, having no known predators here. They were introduced accidentally a couple of years ago, and now are almost everywhere. They like to hide under ledges in coral, but are very docile and not aggressive. I guess not having predators makes you pretty confident. Their favorite fish is the Nassau Grouper which is under immense pressure from over fishing already. We now spear and kill any lion fish we see, doing our part to reduce the scourge. Oh yeah and it is pretty fun.

Last note, we have uploaded our first set of Bahamas pictures, see the link to the right.

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