Happy Birthday to Becca!
We had decided today would be the calmest day for sailing. We are going to have some very windy days ahead. We needed a provisioning, garbage and water run in the morning so Kevin and Marina took us over in one of the dinghies. The market was good today; lettuce was back.
We returned and readied the boat for sailing. We had very light winds so it was very pleasant. We tried out the flying fish daisy chain, the yellow squid and a spoon but no luck. We tried to cruise around the shelf. Great action on the Daisy with high future hopes. We probably were not moving fast enough.
We had a lovely sail and then the wind completely died. We were able to jump into the deep blue water. We played there with the GoPro. Mermaids were sighted.
On our way back in, we anchored off Da Sand Bar and some of us swam to shore. We saw a lovely large starfish on the way in. We got some conch salad at the shack there from Ron who was very nice and let us watch and film the conch salad making process. We had one tropical and one regular. The tropical had fresh pineapple and apple. The salad was spiced with goat pepper, a small yellow pepper that you could easily mistake for just that. Very little was needed.
Ron spent a lot of time talking about the conch to us. We could not pull the animal out of its shell until he “jerked” around the top with a knife. A stingray, however, can suck the animal out of its shell. We learned how to tell male from female (only after harvest), and that conch can reproduce after about 6 years. They only take conch that have 5-6 crown rows. These are best for the salad. Kevin was given some choice parts of the conch.
We played a little volleyball after the salad. Ron joined us for awhile. We headed back to the boat while we still had light to get home. Amy rowed Fat Tuesday and some of us swam. We rehooked to our mooring ball without a problem.
The group shuttled off and we worked on the boat for a bit, baked a Kevali key lime pie and played some Quoridor before bed.