Leaving Allans Cay

We woke up early in the morning and decided to head out a few hours earlier than we had planned around 8:15am. We motored and then put up the sails after 30 minutes. We enjoyed just having the sails up for about 2 hours when the wind died and so we turned our motor back on for the rest of the trip. Wind was variable ranging from 5-8.5 knots and we traveled at 2.7 knots with only the sails and when we turned on the motor we were traveling 5.5 knots. I stayed in the cabin for a little while reading to stay cooler in the shade. We had to look out for coral heads and rocks while arriving to our anchorage site on the southwest side of Norman's Cay. We arrived around 12:30pm and only put down one anchor due to the good holding and lack of wind. We felt more wakes here due to no protection from the boat traffic. We made a hot dog lunch really quick because Dan invited us to go spearfishing again around the harbor. We motored to the southern area near the channel in our dinghy and found some rocks with coral growing on them to test their luck at spearfishing. We were skeptical at first, but then they saw some grouper and squirrel fish swimming around and decided that some were big enough to catch. So they began their search and capture mode for dinner while I stayed in the dinghy to see if they would be successful. After a few minutes JR came swimming up to the boat with a small Nassau grouper and so my task was to take care of the fish and make sure they don't spoil in the hot sun. Luckily, we had a compartment in the center seat and we put the fish in there with some salt water and kept them cool and fresh. Then Dan came back with another Nassau grouper and later they turned up with a squirrel fish. The last thing they caught was a medium sized spider (?) crab!! Holy cow, we had collected some varied sea bounty for dinner! :) Then they decided the few rocks in the area wouldn't provide any more fish and so we returned to the rocks near our boats and searched for more. I was last to leave the dinghy with my snorkel gear and by the time I swam to the guys they had caught a good sized Lane Snapper. So I swam back to the dinghy really quick and got the net to put the fish in so they could continue fishing. I promptly put the fish in the net and swam back to the dinghy because JR said there was a barracuda stalking us for the fish we had just caught. I proceeded to swim to the dinghy with the fish in the net trying to keep our catch above water to reduce our chances of attack and losing our fish. I crawled into the dinghy while JR held the other side to keep the crab from sliding out and I quickly put the fish into the compartment with the others. Then when I look up I saw Dan swimming back to the dinghy with a good sized Nassau grouper. After he caught this fish we decided we were done for the day because we had enough food for dinner. While I pulled up the anchor for the dinghy we could see the pesky barracuda stalking us. Dan decided to swim back to his boat because we were close enough and we watch as the barracuda followed him the entire way. We tried to scare the barracuda away with our engine, but it only moved to the other side of Dan still following closely. We returned to our boats and picked up at few things including my camera to clean and prepare the fish for dinner. I had never seen anything killed like this before and so I learned from Dan when he killed the largest grouper by severing the spine right behind his head through his gills. I helped out be scaling the squirrel fish, which I have to say was really scaly. Then I proceeded to learn something new by gutting my first fish. I wore my dive gloves to prevent any harm to myself from the sharp fins, spines and teeth of the fish. I have to say it wasn't too difficult to complete the task, but it was quite messy and slippery feeling. I suspect the gloves will never lose that fishy smell. The guys filleted the fish except for the squirrel fish as we decided we were going to steam it whole. We ended up with a snapper and grouper filet, the squirrel fish, the crab, and all the fish heads. When we returned to the boat we began cooking immediately. First we boiled the crab legs in hot pepper flakes, sweet paprika, and orange peel. Then we cooked the snapper and grouper with blackened seasoning in a fry pan. We ate the fish promptly and both filets were delicious. You really can't get fish any fresher than this. Then we boiled the fish heads to get fish stock for some soup. Meanwhile, we steamed the squirrel fish in saltwater for 5 minutes with no seasoning except a little soy sauce before serving and it was out of this world! I had never eaten squirrel fish before and I have to say it was really good. :) JR said he wasn't hungry anymore, but the squirrel fish was devoured in minutes. We tasted a small piece of the crab and found it was delicious similar to the stone crab meat we have eaten before, but different as we know how a stone crab looks. We decided to save the crab for the next day since they are better cold or at least room temperature. Then we went to shore to check out McDuff's bar & grill. We heard they had good burgers, but we wanted to see what the cost was before we went there hungry the next day. We ordered a Kalik ($6) and a Goombay Smash ($8) and saw that their burgers were a whopping $18! We were glad that we checked first, but it was a nice bar and place to see with Houston's-like décor with an island twist. I liked the cute dogs, a golden Labrador & a chihuahua that greeted people when you entered. :) We rushed back through the wooded trail to evade the ever hungry mosquitoes and got to shore in time to catch the end of the sunset and stopped to take a couple photos, but as I was standing still I got bitten twice. I quickly jogged back to our dinghy and got in with JR behind me. We were chased off shore with mosquitoes and immediately missed Allan's Cay because we never had this problem there and we really liked it. We then went back to talk to Dan & family about McDuff's (we were not going back) and they told us about the cool houses and how far away the submerged plane wreck was from shore. They said they would probably leave the next day because they couldn't dinghy to the plane wreck and the restaurant was too expensive to try. We were on the fence about leaving because I wanted to see the submerged plane and the other side of the island, but JR was going to look at the weather and decide when we would leave because we didn't want to be stuck in an unprotected area with a big storm coming this weekend. I agreed that we should be in a anchorage with good holding and protection from severe weather (strong wind and waves). We will have to wait and see what our next day will entail.