This is a flower or something.
Even angels gotta sleep, sucka.
Trigger fish Jack speared.
The trigger fish after the shark gottim.
First, I know this is two weeks old. I'm just putting stuff up in order. I'll put up some more tomorrow. Ruth wants to go see the island, not upload photos. Hey, she's the boss.
BENNETT’S HARBOUR, Wednesday, March 12, 2008 by the Jack attack
First of all, my wife is kickass. Did I mention that? I love that girl. Let’s see, what else?
Okay, the cold front passed. We went upisland about a mile or so, outside of the creek we got stuck in, and that’s where I wrote the last bloggy. I went into the resort where the dinner was $45 and used their internet and we ate out burgers, and I was really bummed that I couldn’t put the pictures with the blog that they were associated with. That’s something I should have started doing a long time ago, and as I was trying to do it, it occurred to me that Tom, Becky, or Laura would have done that from the first day. Well, I’m a slow learner. You forgive me? Of course you do, that’s why you’re reading this. Ruth and I are sitting here waiting for a shark. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re up in Bennett’s Harbour, but first I’ll tell you about the past couple of days. The rain let up, and we realized we could use some groceries, and were super low on water. Again. So Ruth left to run her run, and on the way back, pick up groceries in the backpack. Well, the grocery store was 3 ½ miles away, not 1, so I have to tip my hat to her for once again hauling all that back. She blows my mind, what she throws on her back and lugs around.
Well, while she did that, the rain poured like crazy about a couple hundred feet from the boat, and I watched the next sloop over get soaked for a good while. I figured it was coming, and had plenty of time to set up a plastic table cloth from the lifelines, and a bucket under one end to catch the runoff caught in the table cloth. So I set it up and waited. And it rained and rained and rained on that other area, and nothing on us. There was just no wind, but it was weird to watch that for so long, and it never came over to where we were. Anyway, I broke down and went into shore and asked at the resort. It turns out the lady who owns it with her husband is from West Bloomfield, and there many more people there from Kalamazoo. So she gave us free water.
Why am I so long winded? Sorry. We left, and decided on a new way to fish. Ruth drove, and I hung off the dinghy in my snorkel gear in 10-15 feet of water till I saw decent coral and dove down looking for fish. I followed a couple to piece of coral, and waited for them to circle around back to me. They were really strange, swimming not with their tails, but with two fins, one on top, and one on bottom, that moved opposite each other, flapping. It was really odd.
While I waited, I dove down and looked under it for lobster. No lobster, but a big fish under there, wedged up under the rock. I shot that sucker, and go to try to take him out. He wouldn’t budge. I got my gloves and pulled with one hand on the rock, and still nothing. I pulled the spear right out of him, barbed end and all. So, I shot him again, and he still didn’t move. This time, I ended up down about 13 feet, standing on this piece of coral, with both hands pulling upward on the spear, for a good while. I must have dove down 15 times to yank on him, over about half an hour. Finally, I got it out of there, and took it to the boat. I was nervous about how long it took, because the blood attracts sharks, and so does the flopping sound of an injured fish.
Ruth volunteered to clean it, and it was the strangest thing. It had two big hooks on it, one on the dorsal side, and one on the bottom, that it had hooked into the rock with, and that’s why it was so hard to retrieve. And the skin was like sheet metal. The fish scaler didn’t touch the scales at all, and hardly could scrape a mark into its tough hide. The scales, in fact, were all welded together like, so they were one smooth, tough skin. I couldn’t believe it when Ruth showed me. Not only that, but we actually had to use wire cutters to cut the skin once we did puncture it. Really odd. So we finally cleaned it, and got two large filets, which we offered to share with our friends we had just met because we heard them say they were out of food, and also because we finally had enough of something to share some. They told us it’s called a triggerfish. The bones on top and bottom, where the fins would be, are more like spiked hooks, to hook into the rock. A barracuda would just bite and never get through that tough skin, I suppose. Just too tough and slippery. Later that day, we hiked across the island a mile or two, and I snorkeled out into the surf a ways and poked around and took one shot at a big fish, but didn’t pursue it beyond that, because I was out a ways and didn’t want to be out with a bleeding, flopping fish. Also, we heard later that you shouldn’t snorkel there, or something like that, becaue there are a lot of sharks there. Well, NOW they tell me. Just kidding. It was fun.
Well, we ate on their boat, and they made sides, potato salad, coleslaw, beer and carrot cake. We also brought homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookie batter, and baked those in their oven. The whole thing was great. We finally got the grill fixed too, so we made one pan cookie too, which was really good. We have a ton more batter too. So, between that, all the oatmeal cookies, oreos, pudding cups, and other good stuff Ruth bought, we have no complaints. If you ever worry about us and how we’re doing, just remember that we may not have a phone, but we have four kinds of cookies within arm’s reach at all times. It really is a tough life.
In the morning. We jetted the 15 miles north (now with a strong south wind), and tucked into this river in Bennett’s Harbour, similar to where we got stuck in Fernandez Creek, but we threw out 2 anchors, one fore and one aft, so the boat couldn’t wander with what we now see is a considerable current. That’ll help us avoid being a statistic- there are two large boats sunk in here, plus two small boats upside down within 100 feet of our right now.
We took a nice walk, had dinner for $8 each (great price) plus $1.50 for a massive ice cream cone, and $3.00 for a pint of chocolate. You can’t keep it on the boat, so I had to eat it all right then. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, that’s all. We returned, and I built another shelf, and Ruth sewed up my gearbag, and tried to pretend we were productive people for about an hour.
We had taken the fish carcass and hung it over the side on a piece of 1000 lb. test braided nylon cord, and played our newly working XM radio and were talking on the boat in our INCREDIBLY calm anchorage (our friends are out in the rough water, rolling back and forth- you have to feel sorry for these people on these big, luxurious boats, they don’t know how good we have it) when something HIT THE BOAT. And there was a huge splash.
Well, it was a shark. It smacked the side of the boat trying to get that fish. We ran out there, hooked up a light, but it was gone. The fish remained, so we kept an ear out. Sure enough, an hour later, we hear another big splash, and maybe a yank on the boat, and something thrash back and forth. We catch it swimming away, and it bit that fish right in half. Maybe a foot wide, the fish was, and maybe 18 inches long, the part it bit off, and right through all that bone, and tough skin that we had to use wire cutters on. That’s some sharp teeth, it has.
So we’re waiting, listening to Art Blakey, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Kelly and such. Ruth has now expired, and is sweetly sleeping on the bench. Tomorrow we plan to ride around with this cat that knows of all the cheap property on the island, because hey, you never know, maybe someday. After that, on to Little San Salvador, which is halfway between here and Eleuthra. It’s uninhabited, but is a stop for cruise ships. It’s supposed to be beautiful, and there’s reefs all around it. It’s also cool because even though it’s probably only a mile or two across, there’s a salt water lake in the middle, accessible by river to us at high tide, and everyone else pretty much never. So we’ll have yet another amazing private anchorage all to ourselves. After that, Eleuthra, home of the pink sand beaches. Hopefully, they’ll have bread there, the only thing we continually lack. But we just got yeast, so if not bread, maybe we can get flour and make our own. It’s the only thing we lack.
I think I’ll go take a pic of that half a fish before I turn in.
Catch ya on the flip flop.
JL
P.S. Oh yeah. We’re going to try to buy some really big hooks when we get a chance, for the next time we get a shark to bite. Cuz hey, you never know… shark sandwich.
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