More Jumentos

My last blog entry was sent from the Duncan Town School where we had joined a group of cruisers for a BBQ to raise money for a school trip. The eleven students from kindergarten to grade nine have never been off the island and the teacher is hoping to taken them to Nassau on the mailboat. The BBQ was a great success and the local ladies provided some very good food. One of the ladies working had grand ma looking after her daughter...take a look at those sandals!


One of the great things about exploring the beaches in the Raggeds is that you never know what you might find. We put Mr. Johnston, our 3 HP outboard on Goldberry and explored Little Ragged Island. We combed the beaches for shells with little luck; however we did find some sea glass on the ocean side. We also came upon a Haitian sail boat wreck up on one of the ocean beaches. It is not unusual for people in Haiti to pay large sums of money to try and escape to The Bahamas in these wooden boats. More often than not they get caught by the Bahamians and get sent back and the boats are abandoned to become ship wrecks.

From Southside Bay we headed north with First Edition to a new cay call Double Breasted. The area is like an archipeligo of islands and there are lots of places to explore. The first day we headed to shore with Lynn and Peter and spent some time sea glass hunting on the ocean side. Lynn is planning on doing a chandelier of sea glass for her new house. The following day we paddled the kayaks and did some exploring on our own. Peter and Lynn went hunting for lobster. Peter had some lessons on spearing lobster from another cruiser and is doing quite well. In fact Lynn has said that she is almost tired of eating lobster...mind you they have been travelling with some other boats that routinely have lobster that they have speared. Unlike Celebrian's crew who have to buy lobster and as of yet are not tired of eating it. Rob would rather spend his time paddling and exploring than hunting and even though I enjoy eating lobster neither Rob nor I have the killer instinct. We spend our time rescuing conch stranded by the tide; although We have wet our fishing pole once and the fish cleaned off our bait without us noticing. We also had an opportunity to buy some crab legs from Raphael this past week and we had a crab fest on First Edition and met Karen and Chris from Synergy.

This was the first time I have had crab legs fresh from the ocean and they were delicious. We cooked up the rest of the legs that we bought and they are in the freezer for future dining. They were huge and Rob had to use channel pliers to crack the shell. We paid two dollars a claw and everyone said that that was an incredible deal.


The following day after our crab fest Chris speared several hog fish and dropped off a couple of fillets for us and they were scrumptious. What we lack in fresh produce we make up for in fresh sea food in the Jumentos.