Life is Hard Sometimes. This is Not One of Those Times.

Still in Georgetown, and I think we'll be here a while.  We're having a blast.

Saturday, we came in to town to make early Mother's Day phone calls.  (The place with cheap phone calls is closed on Sundays.)  The we did a little more grocery shopping.  We buy groceries every time we come to town.  And then we bought booze!  One of the liquor stores gives 20% off when you buy 6 bottles.  Pretty good deal on top of already cheap rum.  So we're stocked up for a bit.  For years, I think.

Before we went to town Saturday, we noticed our stuffing box was dripping every 3 seconds.  Not so good.  So in the afternoon, we decided we needed to tighten the thing.  It had been 6 months, so we were probably due for a little maintenance.  Unfortunately, it's one of those things we don't do very often, so we forget how to do it.  After loosening and/or tightening (we were never sure which we were doing, maybe that was part of the problem) for a while, we only made it worse.  I thought it might be a good idea to try to block the water from the outside.  So I put on snorkel gear and hopped in the water.  I tried garbage bags, I tried rope.  Couldn't get anything to make a good enough seal.  Finally Trevor figured out that one of the hose clamps needed a little more tightening, and he got the leak stopped.  Yay! 

While I was in the water, though, I notice some fish swimming under the boat.  I thought they looked an edible size, so I tossed a hook in the water, baited with a tiny piece of old hot dog.  And I caught one right off!  I tried again.  Caught another!  I ended up with 5 of these fish.  Of course, I had no idea what they were, just that they looked like they were in the jack family.  So I hopped in the dinghy and took the fish over to Amata Marie to see if they had any idea.  Just before I got there, Greg and Janice showed up on their dinghy.  So we all chatted for a little bit.  Apparently, Jim had fantastic luck spearfishing that afternoon.  Made my 5 little fish seem pathetic, but I was still happy to have them.  I followed Greg and Janice home to Glenice, and Janice helped me look up the fish in her fish book.  They were yellow jacks, or bar jacks.  The book said they are excellent eating.  Sweet!  So I went home and scaled and gutted them.  I wrapped them in aluminum foil with butter, garlic, and some peppers.  Trevor cooked a pasta to go with them.  We had an amazing meal!  Living large here.

Sunday, we finally got around to exploring a little bit of Stocking Island.  We took the trail up to the Monument on top of the hill.  Nice view!  Then we wandered down to the ocean side and wandered the excellent beach over there.  Totally sweet beach!  In our wanderings, we found a coconut.  Yay, our first coconut!  On our way back up the hill, Trevor smashed it on a rock enough to get the outer husk off.  When we got back to the boat, I attacked it with a hammer and screwdriver to get the water out.  Just a tiny sip, but so tasty.  Then I worked on getting the meat out.  I worked for quite a while, but I finally got it all cleaned up.  Yummy coconut!  So much work!  And since it was Mother's Day, I made pudding for our boat moms Janice and Nancy.  They're been so awesome to us on this trip, it seemed the least we could do.  They seemed pretty happy to get pudding.  Now Trevor and I are craving pudding of our own, though, so I might be cooking pudding again tonight.

Yesterday, we vaguely planned to come to town and do more shopping.  But Jim came over and said he was going spearfishing and invited us to come along.  Sure, why not?  Even if we just snorkeled, that's pretty nice.  But he let us borrow his Hawaiian sling, so we were in hunting mode.  Trevor spotted a big, red fish under a rock and pointed it out to me.  So I shot at it, and missed.  Tried again, missed again.  But it drove the fish out of its hiding place.  I got closer and shot again, and I hit it!  But the spear kinda bounced off.  Still the fish just sat there, so I shot it again, this time with more force.  And I got it!  Because we didn't want a struggling, bleeding fish in the water with us, we immediately swam it back to the dinghy, which was really far away!  We were tired by the time we got there.  But we had a fish!  Jim speared a schoolmaster and gave it to us.  And then he pointed out a flounder, and I got that one, too.  The flounder was way smaller than it looked in the water.   Everything looks bigger under water.  We all picked up and moved to another island.  Trevor got to use the spear this time.  We spotted a huge Nassau grouper (good eating!).  But it was a little deep, and Trevor couldn't get quite close enough to get a really good shot.  After the spear got close to it, the grouper hid way down in its burrow.  We were sad to miss out on a treasure like that.  But hey, we still had three fish.  We went home and cleaned up, and then realized we had been in the water for 4 hours.  We both put sunscreen on, but 4 hours in the water in the middle of the day is more than SPF 30 can handle.  So we're both burned on our backs.  Thank goodness for aloe with lidocaine.  Then I proceeded to clean the fish.  And I've come to the conclusion that while small fish are edible and make a decent meal, they are so much work I don't even want them by the time I'm finished cleaning them.  That poor tiny flounder was too small to even mess with, so I tossed it over.  Luckily, it didn't go to waste, as a big barracuda slurped it right down.  But we had an excellent dinner of fish (big-eye snapper and schoolmaster) and steak (we had to eat it since our ice was gone).  Surf and turf!  Delicious.

Today, we're back on shore again, doing some shopping and playing on the internet.  I had the best glass of lemonade!  Fresh squeezed!  So good!  Today is hot, and there's almost no breeze.  So we're enjoying the shade of this porch before we go wandering around town in search of foodstuffs. 

If anybody had a mind to come visit us in the Bahamas, this is the place to do it.  You can stay on the boat (accommodations are very small, but you're welcome to them), or there are places on shore where you can stay.  We're in Georgetown, Exuma.  The airport code is GGT.  But this is the most stationary we'll be until we get back to the States.  So come on down, the water is amazing!  Just let us know soon so we don't leave.  :)  We'd love to have visitors!