Mayaguana

So here we are on our first Bahamanian Island, one of the 'out-islands', about as far away from Nassau as you can get. Mayaguana is a twenty four mile long island, rising to little less than sixty meters and covered in low scrub and the occasional palm tree. Some five hundred people eek out a living here, mostly from fishing, and everyone we meet is friendly and welcoming. The village is neat and tidy, we can get a few fruit and vegetables in the store, and there's even a little playground for the kids to enjoy. It's nice when the 'graffiti' on the playground is the two times tables.

We've also met some wonderful cruisers here, a couple and their fifteen year old son who have ended up being here a month, two weeks by choice and the last two because of the strong winds. Dad and son spend much of their time fishing and hunting down lobster in the bay, and I was invited to go along with them. Having never used a fishing spear before, this was my chance to learn. We grab our wetsuits, flippers, mask and snorkel and zip out in the dinghy to the barrier reef at the edge of the island. Slipping into the four foot deep water, armed with spears, we peer into every crevice and gap in the coral heads. Within minutes, they have speared a large fish and it is flopping around in the bottom of the dinghy. A small lobster quickly follows and I'm feeling a bit of a dunce having seen nothing, let alone caught it.

I swim off on my own a bit, hunting out new ground and then, yes, in that gap I can see it. A nice big spiny lobster (they are like big crayfish, not the fiercely clawed lobster of New England). I arm the spear, which is a long sharp pole with a piece of elastic at the rear end. You hold the elastic between thumb and forefinger, stretch the pole back along your arm then release to shoot it forward. I point it at the unsuspecting lobster. Zing. I miss. The lobster is now somewhat less unsuspecting and retreats into his hole. I arm the spear again and wait. He creeps forward to take another look. Zing. I miss again. My, I'm bad at this. Point blank range with a lumbering crustacean and I can't even graze him. This time he's got the message and has retreated further. I peer in and wonder. Hmmm, perhaps this hole has a 'back door'. I swim around the rock and sure enough, he's creeping out and trying to run. Ha. Found you.

At this point I learn that lobsters actually have a remarkable turn of speed. Flapping his tail wildly he disappears off across the reef. Darn. Then he stops. Mistake. I catch up with him, look him in the eyes and zing, he's on the end of my spear. He's not a happy chappy, of course, but I'm pretty pleased and get him back to the dinghy and into the bucket. The others are impressed; apparently once they get off and swimming you've usually lost them. Lucky me to get a dumb one. He weighs a couple of pounds, which means he'd cost you forty bucks at a restaurant, so that'll be a nice dinner.

Meanwhile the other guys have bagged a couple more fish but we're all getting cold so decide to round off the trip with a few conch and call it a day. Off to the eel-grass field in about six feet of water, we drift with the current and pick up about ten conch, which will make a decent amount of salad and other meals. Being rather slow moving molluscs, our hunting skills are not really challenged in this battle.

Back on the boat we show off our catch and invite our new friends over for drinks and have an enjoyable evening swapping stories. They are heading the same way as us, so we hope to meet again a few times, it'd be nice to fish some more. I'm shown how to clean a conch, which is a messy procedure but leaves us with a nice lump of meat and a beautiful shell, we'll have to work on conch recipes since they are plentiful here.

The lobster is put on the grill, and is very nice with garlic butter, he easily feeds Gesa and I although the kids won't even try it. I tell Issie that if they won't try it now, then I am NEVER going to let them order lobster at any restaurant where I am paying the bill. I'll have to remember that.

Today we do school in the morning, and I work with Max on his maths, which he clearly has a feel for and is doing well, unlike Issie who can but won't. With reading and writing it's the other way round so I guess we're doing fine on balance..... Then I take the kids ashore to find a loaf of bread and we have a fun trip in the dinghy. The bay we are in is very shallow, so we are anchored about half a mile from shore, in seven feet of crystal clear water over gleaming white sand. We skim across this turquoise mirror in the dinghy, with the dark shapes of coral and rock appearing to left and right as we go. At one point, a very black shape appears on the sea bed in front of us and we slow to take a look. It is a huge ray, swimming along the bottom. It swims away from us and we follow for a while then continue on our way. After our trip ashore, we find another ray, this one is more than huge, he is as wide as the dinghy, four feet across and doesn't move when we approach. I have the underwater camera so I capture a few shots but it doesn't show the scale of this beautiful fish. Elsewhere, the dark shape of a nurse shark is spooked by our approach and leaves the scene but we recognise him as he goes. This is a very different place to anywhere we have been before.

We then had lunch and all went off again in search of a beach. The visible beach is behind an inner reef of low lying coral and we couldn't get to it by dinghy but eventually we just anchored the dinghy and waded though the knee deep water to the beach. The edge of the island is made up of huge thin slabs of limestone, which I guess must be quite young stone as it is not very compacted and is easily fractured and chipped away. We explore with interest and suddenly begin to notice fossils and shells embedded in the stone. The kids are now thrilled to be real paleontologists as they grab a harder rock and chip away at the limestone. Issie quickly frees an old conch shell, and in the harder, more weathered rocks nearer the shore we find large shells sticking out of the eroded substate. It's fascinating, and I'd love to know how old these rocks are. The kids couldn't have a better introduction to geology and the age of the earth than talking about this stuff on a deserted beach at the shore of a crystal clear lagoon. It's magical.

Tomorrow we have to leave this place, sadly, because the weather has turned fine and we have a good window to get to Long Island, where our friend Maik will meet us in Clarence Town to join the boat for a couple of weeks. We'll cruise gently from there, but to get there is 120 miles. Thankfully it'll be calm downwind sailing, a big contrast to the tough trip here and I'm looking forward to it. Gesa is delighted to hear that it is probably our last overnight trip...