24 Hour Sail to New Providence

June 4-5, 2016

With weather getting less predictable so late in the season, we decided to make rapid progress home with a direct sail back to Nassau. From Arthur's Town we would sail west, keeping north and skirt the southern coast of Eleuthra, cross the Exuma Sound, sail right through a passage near the northern tip of the Exhumas, and then jig northwest to sail right into the eastern entrance to Nassau Harbor.  

Experience led us to longer and longer (aka: more accurate) calculations for average distance to destination, so we figured on a conservative a 20 hour sail.  We left Arthur's Town, Cat Island at 3:45 PM for the overnight sail. We predicted a sunrise arrival in the  Exumas and a near-noon arrival in Nassau, with plenty of sunlight left for error.  And if we sailed faster than expected, and finished the leg to the Exumas before sunrise we would be able to turn north up the Exumas until sunrise and pick the next best crossing, then sail a shortened northwest leg through the morning.

Wind was coming steady at nearly 20 knots directly from the east, so I used my spare Garhauer 4:1 snap shackle blocks to rig a boom preventer so we could safely sail wing-and-wing dead down wind out of the anchorage in Arthur's town at 7 knots.  Engines are for the nervous.  I even found that the Aries windvane actually really likes sailing wing and wing downwind, provided you set your sails correctly for helm.

In our usual routine, after setting the windvane I droppped three heavy 6" plastic squid lures in the water to troll, set out on two hand fishing spools with massive 150lb. test clear monofilament line.  I had taken to sending two lures out on one of the spools, spaced at about 15 feet, so maybe it "looked" like a small school of squid were following our boat.  (Do squid school?  Do they follow boats?  Fish don't give a shit, so neither do I.)

Shortly out of sight of Arthur's town we landed three Jacks on all three lures at the same time.  During the "fight" (I throw on leather gloves, grab the line by hand, and mostly just yank them aboard) we lost the second lure on one of the lines, but still ended up with two Jacks alongside.   I wasn't really able to ID them (Jack Crevalle?), but I know their shape is both edible and tasty.

When I gutted the first jack, it had some strange yellow grub-like things in pockets around the gut sac, but when I began cutting the filet at the head, I saw they were big yellow worms and they had eaten pockets throughout its flesh...  We tossed it back and I began filleting the second one.  Same issue.  I thought back on every piece of raw fish I had devoured.  Still within range of BaTelCo's Cat Island Cell Towers, Sarah looked up wild fish parasites on Google and confirmed our findings, while I dumped bucket after bucket of seawater into the cockpit to wash away the blood and guts.

I steered west into the sunset; I couldn't be taken by its splendor.  Covered in the red spatterings of missed fish guts, I gazed downward into the endless ocean and mourned the death of my love: Sushi.

But the ocean heard my call and shortly after sunset, as we crossed into the deep of  the Exuma Sound and landed our first Yellowfin Tuna, two at the same time.  A raw fish eater's delight.   We couldn't take on that much meat, so I tossed one back to filet the other.  No worms, just that famous firm beef-red tuna flesh.

The eyes looked up at me.  "Eat me," it called out. "I am safe." I hesitated.  Then I saw that beautiful raw tuna flesh for myself.  I couldn't not eat it.  So, I didn't not eat it.

Jacked Jack by day, Tasty Tuna by night.

After filling up on tuna, we watched a movie to start the overnight passage on the west leg to the Exhumas.  We were following a rarely-travelled path through the islands with no shipping lanes until morning, so we relaxed below for much of the night on a "mutual watch," allowing our AIS/GPS warning beacons and regular on-deck checks to prevent mishaps in the dark.  The boom preventer proved very useful as I was able to fine tune the rig to allow the boat to ghost downwind as slow as 2.5 knots with about the same in apparent wind across the deck while Alfred, our Aries windvane, self-steered.

Yes, you read that right.  Don't give up on your windvane!

I believe you can balance almost any self-steering device with sail trim.  Just play with your boom vang, Cunningham, outhaul, preventer (if downwind), etc., and especially sacrifice your sheeting in order to find the sailtrim to balance the boat in a way that your windvane likes.  Optimal performance trim does not result in optimal cruising/self-steering trim, and the half knot you lose in speed is made up for by perfect directional steering that responds properly to swells and waves over the course of hours and never stalls.  A well-set windvane is as good as 90% of helmsmen, and even a better helmsman would require constant concentration to beat it over a long course.  We will eventually get an electric autopilot for motoring, but the windvane is an amazing tool that is far more useful than most people give it credit for.

Sunrise after a full night of ghosting downwind in still water, and Alfred the windvane finally gybed at 2 knots boat speed with zero wind across the deck.  I was half-awake eyeing the sun anyway, so I stepped on deck and looked around at the glassy sea.  We let the sails hang and the boat bob in the middle of endless deep blue, 10 miles east off the Exhumas sea shelf, while we made coffee and breakfast and prepared for a day of motoring.

The next day went smoothly.  We motored up to the eastern shore of Highbourne Cay, where we had first entered the Exhumas a month and a half earlier on the west side.  It was an easy inlet just north of the island, and by the time we were crossing on the shelf, the wind was back and we were able to quiet the blazing iron beast again and sail for most of the northwest leg.

As afternoon wore on, we caught a couple very large barracuda that also took the last two squid lures with them when trying to de-hook.  The wind turned northwest, and we had to motor into Nassau for the last hour.  And at 3:45 PM the next day, after a slow, relaxing, exactly-24-hour sail, we dropped anchor.

While backing down on the anchor, I released the tiller long enough for the rudder to overturn, and BAM!, make contact with the prop.  The boat started violently shaking, and I shut down the engine immediately.  A jump overboard to inspect for damage revealed that my two bladed bronze prop was now a one bladed bronze prop.  Luckily Cheoy Lee uses a 1 1/2" diameter solid steel driveshaft that is only 16" long for the boat, so that was still straight...  and at least the anchor was set deep.

Racing to the Regatta

We planned on seeing the Exumas, but I wanted more than anything to be in Georgetown for the Family Island Regatta, so our trip from Nassau to Georgetown, through the entirety of the 365 islands in the Exuma chain, happened in the span of a week.

Leaving the east end of Nassau harbor can prove difficult in a flow tide, as water rushes in at half hull speed. We motored against the wind and current and resulting seas at three knots for a full two hours before we could turn south. Wind was never in our favor that day, and we stopped short of our first day goal of Norman's Cay. Norman's Cay is the former home to a notorious 1990's cocaine trafficker, and also notoriously close to Johnny Depp's Private Cay...

But with the sun headed towards the horizon, we stopped in Highbourn Cay just a few miles north.

It was a cute little island with a single very nice (and expensive) marina and a single resort. Our arrival was heralded that evening with fireworks

The next day with an ENE wind, we set sail southeast down the chain. Our eventual stop was Staniel Cay, or more specifically, Big Major Cay, home of the famous swimming pigs, about a half mile north. I was feeling a bit down about not catching a fish on the way from Nassau to Highborn Cay. We had much success trolling lures behind the boat in the Berry Islands, and reports from other cruisers promised the Exumas were replete with fish. Finally, as we sailed past a deep cut that day, the line on our our starboard side trolling spool went taught. I hauled it in only to find we had caught some seaweed. As soon as I cleaned the lure and dropped it in the water, I watched a Mahi Mahi take it at full speed just as it passed the stern. The line wasn't cleated yet, and started jumping off the spool. I tried to stop the fish's run when the line went slack. I had lost him. Even before my heart could sink, the port side trolling spool started spinning with another Mahi Mahi, this time large enough to yank the line through the cleat. I dropped the starboard spool and jumped across the cockpit to grab the port spool and start hauling it in. As I pulled the fish alongside the boat, I could see we had caught a very large male Bull Mahi, but in one last spurt of energy, he jumped out of the water, slapped me in the face, and ripped the lure right off the end of the line. Dejected, I hauled in the starboard side line only to find out that lure had also been taken with a bite clean through the leader. In spite of the loss of two fish and two lures, it was a perfect day of sailing. We sailed all day pointing just a hair above a beam reach in 20 knot of wind, gliding across the flat seas of the protected lee of the islands. Alfred the Butler, our self steering windvane, was able to steer a laser straight course. 

With the moon nearly full and hands-off sailing so easy we decided to sail into the night arriving at Big Major Cay shortly after midnight.

Aside from the swimming pigs, in the half mile stretch of water between Big Major and Staniel Cays lies another rather famous landmark: Thunderball Grotto. An unremarkable rock in the middle of the straight has been hollowed out by millennia of erosion to become remarkable enough for a 007 film of the same name. I wanted to swim in it before we left, but it is only tenable at low tide, and low tide the day after swimming with pigs was at 4pm. With our successful night sail a couple days earlier, we decided to wait until the afternoon and I made a quick trip across the bay to Thunderball Grotto to grab some GoPro footage before we weighed anchor and set sail exactly into the sunset.

We sailed past Great Guana Cay that evening and anchored under a 3/4 moon at Farmer's Cut. The next morning we headed out Farmer's Cut into the deep on the eastern side of the Exuma chain for the final passage to Georgetown.

Offshore was quite a bit rougher than our protected sailing before, and with a ESE wind we only made it as far as Lee Stocking Cay before a storm blew in and had us ducking into Aderly Cut early in the afternoon.

We finished the trip to Georgetown the next day, and in the pelagic waters off the eastern shores of the islands, we finally landed the big Bull Mahi Mahi that had eluded us.

I am a firm believer in fillet and release.

The Regatta had started a day earlier. The sloops were racing around Georgetown Harbor as we sailed in and selected our viewing spot near the Chat and Chill for the remaining three days of racing. 

Just as we dropped anchor I heard the sound of twin turbo props approaching immediately behind us. A very nice amphibious float plane had decided to enter the harbor and visit the Chat and Chill as well.

Crossing Back to the US and Sailing the Keys

Clint and I anchored overnight under a full moon in the shallow Bahama Banks, watching fish cast moon shadows on the sandy bottom. It was the last peaceful sight we would have of the Bahamas.   We continued crossing the next morning towards South Riding Rocks, arriving that evening.  South Riding Rocks is a point marked on a couple poorly detailed charts at the south end of the Bimini chain.  A more southern start is better when crossing the north flowing Gulf Stream, so I figured it would give us the easiest shot back to Miami.  I wasn't wrong, but it sits exactly at the edge of the shallows and the beginning of the Gulf Stream.  I didn't know that it was literally an exposed jagged rock mountain top on the edge of an underwater cliff.   Anchored that close to the deep churning stream, just off some "protective" rocks was a nightmare.  Neither of us slept much that night as the boat pitched wildly, tugging hard at the line. The anchor only dragged 50 feet before resetting when the tides shifted in the middle of the night, but in terms of the boat pitching and rolling; there were times I woke up from a dream where I thought I was falling to find I actually was.As soon as daylight came over the horizon, we checked our bed bruises, weighed anchor, and sailed with haste for Miami and away from that place.

Early into the Gulf Stream we caught a just-right size female Mahi that put up quite a fight, circling the boat four or five times and costing us nearly a half hour of gybeing and tacking, bashing the short Gulf Stream swells to hold position.  I helmed while Clint reeled her in and she was served up immediately for lunch and again at dinner.

We entered the Biscayne Bay in the mid afternoon under sail alone, pinching hard on the wind to make it all the way up the channel as well.  We finally started the engine when we had to cross the bay four more miles dead to windward with a very large and fast approaching storm.  Halfway across the bay with the storm nearly upon us, the engine overheat buzzer started screaming.  I immediately shut down the engine, dropped anchor nearly dead center of the bay, and rushed below to assess the damage.  Nothing burning, nothing smoking, just a bit hotter than usual.  A clogged raw water intake strainer.  I rushed to unscrew the canister, rake out the muck with my finger and came on deck just in time to find the weather had already dropped ten degrees. The sky was black and droplets beginning to fall.  With only a couple miles left, we hauled anchor, but couldn't outrun anything.  We were completely soaked through and shivering by the time we grabbed the mooring ball at Coconut Grove Sailing Club just south of Miami proper.

While back in Miami at Coconut Grove, I decided to try my hand at getting the 1970's Aries self-steering windvane operational again.  I had put a bit of thought and effort into it before the Bahamas, but couldn't get the corroded sub-assemblies apart to replace bushings, wasn't able to visualize the rope route without chafe points, was pressed for time, and eventually decided that hand steering would be fine for one trip with two fit reasonably-young men.



At some point in the in the Bahamas I finally realized that the rope routing solution was easy with a third set of blocks. So was removing the frozen and broken parts once I took the entire assembly off the boat and brought it to a vice and oxy-acetylene torch.  I wish I had put in more effort before the Bahamas, not just because hand steering is a bit exhausting, but because wind vane steering is so damn awesome.

Unlike electronic autohelm systems that make jerky incremental helm inputs based on compass heading, helm changes with the wind vane come progressively, at the exact right time, and with helm pressure and direction consistently matching wind pressure and direction; all you have to do is sit and watch it happen.  Motion is smoother and the course is more consistent than if you were manning the helm yourself.  Also, setting course relative to wind instead of compass means that I can start up the engine while sailing, set the wind vane to keep the boat dead into the wind, (which it seems to be able to do better than a human) and take all the time I want to casually douse and store my sails.  Wind vanes are so effective and so pleasant for sail voyaging that many owners speak of the equipment as another crew member and give it a name.  Yet due to my laziness, in a month and a half of sailing we only got to enjoy it for the two days it was actually repaired on our sail from Miami to Key West.




Look, No hands.  Oh, and I finally made use of a razor and clippers in Miami as well.



Another benefit of the wind vane is that I can make lunch while just glancing out the windows for obstacles and at my Android tablet to verify course.



While in the Grove I also dug out my sewing machine, a nearly-mint, 100% complete-with-all-OEM-accessories-and-manual, steel gear driven, 1959 Singer 401A Slant-o-Matic in the rare and sexy faux alligator skin case...  I love to hear the song of that huge motor pushing those polished steel gears resonating inside the heaviest-of-all-cast-aluminum-singers housing...  oh, and I used it to whip up some rope bags for the cabintop assembly and mainsheets, and a sunbrella curtain for the propane tanks.



Yeah, yeah, whatever, sewn stuff.  Now here is the money shot: the sexy machine that did the job.  It turns me on every time I turn it on.  (Mechanical Object Love is a real thing, Google it.)

When we left Coconut Grove for Key West, I apparently forgot that I had a camera.  We took two days sailing to Key West enjoying the wind vane, anchoring our first night in nomanswater and making Key West by sundown the second day...  No pictures, some blurry surreal memories, numerous drinks, and an uncounted number of few days later, we sailed in a very hung over state back east to Marathon, FL.  A true Key West experience.

Once in Marathon Clint caught a flight out, and I made arrangements to have Robin hauled for the remainder of the hurricane season and return to Sarah in Arkansas.  ...That was nearly a year ago...

The Southern Berry Islands: Mostly Fish

Late May 2014

The Southern Berries is where I began to feel truly comfortable with the boat.  In just the few weeks since leaving Stuart Robin had been actively motoring and sailing. There are maneuvers like heavy weather gybing, docking, anchoring, entering narrow/shallow channels with a following current, etc, that I needed to experience before I could let myself ease into the boat, comfortable in the knowledge of how it would behave.  We had already checked off everything on the shortlist above, and many others.  Aside from constantly concerning myself over maneuvering, common tasks like navigation, radio watch, watching/listening to every piece of rigging/hardware for signs of failure, and general worrying of impending disaster take up most of my thought time when sailing.  On the cruise to the southern berries, that anxiety finally began to subside and I could finally enjoy the sound of the water on the hull and the waving palms on passing islands, getting lost instead in the world around me.

The sea state was a very strong chop, and we had to tack a couple times to round Great Harbor Cay. But even beating in the steep seas, we were able to heave to while we reeled in a very healthy Permit in about 40 feet of water near the edge of the Great Harbor shelf. 

Almost immediately after catching, killing (it was a bleeder!), and photographing the Permit, we snagged a small Jack Crevalle that we decided to make into a quick lunch before turning the Permit into fillets.  Clint scaled and gutted the Jack, and I scored it with a knife, curried and pan fried it whole in coconut oil until the skin was crispy and the meat began to flake, then squeezed our last fresh lemon on top...

  

Shortly after lunch we rounded Shelling Beach on the south east tip of Great Harbor Cay, we were able to fall off the wind to the south a few more degrees and take our final tack towards that evening destination: Flo's Conch Bar, a single family settlement on the protected southwest shore of Little Harbor Cay.  They apparently welcome and cook for visitors, but you have to notify them of your arrival by radio at least a couple hours in advance.  

We rounded the southern tip of Little Harbor Cay to find there was a relatively narrow channel entrance into western harbor with waves crashing on barely submerged breakers to the south, and a strong following current.  But we weren't phased and neither was Robin, easing gracefully from the steep seas to the smooth shallows and dropping anchor just in time from some evening exploring on the small islets surrounding Flo's Conch Bar before a new thunderhead rolled in.

Flo's Conch Bar.  You welcome!

The evening storm.

The Permit was butchered for the first night's dinner.  Truly amazing fish.  Permit is the now the tastiest fish I have never eaten.  Firm, sweet, and flavorful as a shellfish when raw.  Flaky, sweet and buttery when cooked all on its own.  It served for about three meals before we had to toss the last couple fillets because they were getting mushy (no refrigeration, remember).



Playing with my food.

The next day we rounded the southern tip of the Berry Islands to stop at Chub Cay in order to stage for our next leg to Nassau.  Fuel and the usual marina services are offered at the small and rather expensive Chub Cay Marina.  It is a private island, and a semi-private marina that caters to members but services the public for extra revenue.  Although the ship store had very little to offer, fuel was 50% overpriced, food/drinks at the bar were expensive and terrible, the wifi was slow, the laundry machines were broken and rusted out, and the whole property infested with mosquitoes. There was a however a lovely beach, a decent anchorage, and a lot of money being dumped into the property...  it looks like it may be a nice place in the future.

With a couple days to wait for a weather window to set sail for Nassau, and only terrible, expensive food available, Clint and I were happy to have the Conch and Permit.  Two of our three conch made up our first morning's breakfast, just had to get them out of the shell first.  I had read how to do it, and it was exactly as I had read: punch a hole with a hammer and awl just above the second row in the crown of spikes, and you will see the conch's strong arm thingy wrapped around the center flute inside.  Sever it and pull the conch out.  I had not yet read about tenderizing and skinning the conch yet, so the final conch ciabatta sandwiches were a bit tough and chewy, but still tasty.

After three days of wind on the nose, we decided to just motor to Nassau.  The day before our departure, I swam to the beach to snap a shot of Robin on anchor at Chub Cay.

(Beach is off limits to non members?!?  *LOL*)

Exploring The Northern Berry Islands, The Bahamas

Late May 2014

Bimini was just a day's crossing from Miami, and it felt like a day trip vacation.  Adding to this feeling was the influx of boats that crossed just for the weekend.  I wanted to get knee deep in nowhere, and Bimini just wasn't going to cut it.  After a week of easterly wind we had a break (that is to say: no wind) when we were able to motor the 75+ miles to the Berry Islands.  Motoring in a boat that travels at a brisk walking pace with the diesel engine churning out power immediately below your feet is no fun, and on that wind-less day with blazing sun, it was a brutal 14 hour ride, punctuated only by the catch of a couple barracuda.

Feeling adventurous, we decided to butcher and eat one.  Bad decision.  We figured out why barracuda is on no menu anywhere.  While we avoided ciguatera by choosing a smaller 'cuda, we found that barracuda is still not something you want to eat.  It is a somehow dry-yet-oily, almost fibrous meat that has a pasty, bitter flavor.  We made pasta for dinner with enough leftover for breakfast, (we reluctantly decided to finish the dish the next morning to not waste food.)

A couple hours after dinner and just after sunset, we finally arrived in the Berry Islands, heading for the northernmost anchorage. A small pocket with an even smaller entrance nestled between Big Stirrup and Little Stirrup Cay (pronounced "key").  Both cays were marked on the charts as "private islands". And since I have a penchant for "light trespassing," I was excited to see what they would contain the next morning.  At night all I could make out were a few lights on shore.  The next morning, (over the forced barracuda breakfast and coffee), we heard jetskis and music coming from shore.  Turns out that Little Stirrup key is owned by Royal Caribbean cruiselines and Big Stirrup is owned by NCL cruiselines or something like that.  Didn't really care, as I saw that two towering cruiseships had anchored in the wee hours just outside of our private little harbor entrance.  Some "creeping" with the binoculars (Clint's verb for boater's predilection for remote voyeur-like observation of unwitting subjects) showed that last night's intriguing lights from shore were the jet ski/kayal rental and parasailing ride kiosks and the tiki bars serving frozen strawberry daiquiris to the cruise guests.  Our antique minimalist sailboat was anchored amidst buzzing jet skiiers, inexpertly-paddled plastic kayaks and pasty-white vacationing middle Americans packed onto a small beach turning themselves pink.  Not at all what we had come to the middle-of-nowhere Bahamas in search of.

Yesterday's disappointing fishing catch and a disappointing arrival location meant we were leaving immediately.  A quick look at the chart revealed the anchorage we should have headed for: about five islands and a few miles south, on the shallow flats west of Big Harbor Cay.  There was a small settlement named "Bullock's Harbor" with an anchorage nestled behind the cliffs that had easy access to a low concrete sea wall at the edge of a small church parking lot ("The City Dock" we later found out).  The wind had picked up since yesterday, but only to about 10 knots from the east.

I decided since the day was young and we had nothing to do, that we would sail the whole way, even tacking for a few miles into the wind on the approach.  I asked Clint to just hang out and watch so I could practice tacking and reset sails in such light wind with a tiller by myself.  I managed rather easily, and was able to squeeze out 4.5 knots of boat speed hard upwind with only 10-12 apparent wind, losing only a knot on my six tacks.  When we approached our final anchoring point, I decided to try and do that by myself and under sail as well.  I furled the foresail on approach, rounded "into irons" dead upwind under just mainsail, coasted to a stop over our anchor point, cinched the mainsheet in to pull the boom hard into center, ran forward and dropped the anchor.  With just the mainsail up and sheeted hard the boat drifts backwards slowly, the sail acting like a fin on a dart to keep the boat pointed into the wind.  We drifted onto the full scope of our rode (anchor line and chain) and I dove overboard to check the anchor was well set in the sand.  I jumped back aboard and dropped the mainsail, completing a full skills-test of upwind tacking and anchoring alone under strictly sail.  I was quite impressed with myself so we immediately went ashore to find that cold beer reward a day late.

After a week in Bimini and a long hard day crossing, we were beginning to realize that the thing you want most when you don't have refrigeration is cold beer.  Rum with freshly harvested coconut juice and lime is abundant, cheap, and easy on the boat, and that was our drink of choice (total menu choices = 1) at the end of nearly every hard day (all of them), but keeping beer cold requires serious equipment.  Off to the only bar in town to toss back a couple Bahama-local Kalik Golds.

We spent another couple days in the harbor exploring the nearby islands.  Another private island, just to the north and more like I was hoping for, proved an excellent site for some light trespassing.

And just off its beaches was the remains of a twin radial engine aircraft, pointing hopefully towards the airport just ahead on the main island.

Life and locals were laid back and helpful in Bullock's Harbor.  We never walked the entire distance to anywhere, as we were always offered a ride by a passing local.  A couple days later though, we were already itching to see more of the Bahamas, and so decided to move on.  We hadn't really fully investigated the charts of the Berries at that point and had unresolved plans for the future.  We decided to drop back into the little harbor between the Cruise line islands to consider movement for the next day.  Since we were headed back by the cruise liners again, we decided to be more prepared than the last visit.  I had seen the memes and amazon reviews on a book that has now become famous: "How to Avoid Huge Ships."  It has been mentioned in articles by the NY Times, Cracked.com, and even Jimmy Fallon's Do Not Read list.  Due to its new-found internet fame, this slim paperback now sells for well upwards of $100.  My small library of random reference books onboard happens to contain a 1993 published copy that we found on the boat after we bought it. Mine is in perfect condition, perhaps because I've never needed to reference it...  until now.  We thanked our lucky stars that we had expert ship-avoider Captain John Trimmer on our side, his prose guiding us around these dangerous beasts.  But since they lay like sentries on either side of our harbor entrance, we were forced to make a close approach.  We have heard that the Big Ship's only natural enemy was the Pirate, and so I tried adding some new camouflage techniques not described in the book in order to reverse the roles and get the Big Ships to avoid us.

That evening we got to creep on a new group of drunk, sunburned Americans stumbling about a manufactured paradise. Clint requested we push further until at least Nassau and I conceded. But not before catching a few conch!

A conch is a very large sea snail that is native to the Bahamas and Florida Keys.  All you have to do is find them and pick them up!  It has been overfished and is now protected in the Florida Keys, but it is still plentiful and tasty in the Bahamas.  When removed from the shell and skinned, conch flesh is white and sweet, but chewy, so must be tenderized before the usual flash fry with a bit of breading...  basically a sea snail schnitzel.  It chews a lot like good fresh fried clam strips, but tastes even better.  We were on a swim to Little Stirrup Cay to do some "light trespassing" near evening after the cruiseships departed when we each saw a conch.  A quick dive and we were both swimming back to the boat to drop them off when we spotted one more.  Three conch in a quick few minutes!...  I can only imagine it is because no one dives this little anchorage in between two tourist-trap islands, because no one anchors here, because it is between two tourist trap islands.  I even caught a fourth, a King conch.  It is a different species that apparently is no good to eat, but has a beautiful brown and tan stripe shell.

With our conch in a bucket in the cockpit, we set out the next day, this time rounding the northern tip of the Berry Islands to the east before turning south, to follow the chain's many cays en route to Nassau.