Jackpot

Conception Island
Wednesday, February 22
N 23 degrees, 50.00 minutes
W 075 degrees, 08.42 minutes

We escaped from George Town on Tuesday, sailing halfway to Conception Island before we had to turn the motor on. Just north of the tip of Long Island, our patented clothespin and bungee fishing system gave its signal, and we could see a bright green and yellow fish, hooked on the spoon Greg gave us, thirty feet behind the boat. Dean brought in the line hand over hand, and landed a beautiful female dolphin (NOT the mammal, silly; it's a fish, also known as a dorado or mahi mahi). She was probably 8 or 10 pounds, and we shared her, grilled, for dinner with Kim and David from s/v Amanzi. They are also headed south, and their boat travels through the water at about the same speed as Delilah.

Dad, we also tried the roe, which I believe you used to fry up, but in the end we gave it to Kim's cats.

But the story gets better. We spent Wednesday relaxing and snorkeling at Conception, which is an uninhabited island with miles of reefs close to shore. Conception is part of the Bahamas park system, but we learned in the afternoon that fishing and spearfishing are allowed. It took Dean and David all of three seconds to get suited up and zip off in a dinghy with their spears.

Two hours later, they reappeared with two of the biggest lobsters I've ever seen. These guys were at least 8 pounds apiece.

Spiny lobsters are different from Maine lobsters in that they have no large front claws, and the tail meat extends further up into the body cavity. Dean and I split HALF of a tail for dinner! I'm looking forward to lobster salad for lunch.

The only downside, if you could call it that, is that I keep promising to make stock from the heads and bones of what we catch, and every time I look into the fridge today there are several sets of accusing eyes looking back at me.

Today we are back at sea, sailing (motoring) overnight to Mayaguana. Already Greg's spoon has produced a fish, but until we can identify what we caught, we can't fry him up.

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