January 5, 2011.

Happy Birthday Christopher.

After seven days of being alone and enjoying total radio silence we heard our name broadcast on the airwaves. Our first thought was “Shhh, we can hide” but we decided we were ready to see some of our people. We answered and were happy to hear that Fine Lion, Sapphire and Night Hawk had spent the night an hour north of us at Buena Vista Cay. We’ve spent a bit of time with the Sapphires and the Fine Lions and enjoy their company. We’d only met the Night Hawks on the “Night of the Tattered Sweatshirt” so we were looking forward to spending some time to get to know them.

We were all headed to Double Breasted Cay later that day so we had to find some clothes. The trip for us was only about 3 miles and we were the first ones in so we headed out to do a little beach combing. As we returned from a successful day of beach combing we watched the others pulling into the anchorage and dropping their hooks. A fourth boat came in as well, Sam the Skull.

A few years ago Sam the Skull was Boat Name of the Day when we saw it in Georgetown. But this was our first meeting with John & Barbara who live aboard Sam the Skull. They’re from Glasgow, Scotland and with their accents they could just recite the alphabet and make it sound interesting. During the course of cocktails on the beach it came out that John hasn’t had any luck with the whole lobstering thing and they catch most of their bounty of the sea by trolling a lure from the dink out in the cuts.

The next day everyone headed out in a different direction to try their luck. Christy and I ended up taking 5 lobsters in an hour and a half and as I swam one final ledge I came across every spear fisherman’s dream, the lobster hole. There were 10 lobsters in the hole and in 3 minutes we had 5 of them in the dink. We could have grabbed them all but we’re already eating lobster omelets in the morning, lobster tacos for lunch and last night it was Lobster Alfredo for dinner. Our freezer was full but I knew the Sam the Skulls weren’t going to be catching any on their fishing pole so we headed home planning to give away the excess.

John was pretty psyched to get the gift of a few bugs and he told us he had made plans to head out the next day with Barry from Night Hawk to try and hone his hunting skills.

Today dawned sunny with just a touch of breeze. The Fine Lions headed out together to do some hunting. Barry, John and Mike went out to see if they could bring John up to speed on the spear fishing thing while Christy and I planned to just stay at home.

That lasted about 3 minutes before I just couldn’t stand it anymore. “Aw come on Honey, all the other guys are out hunting, can we go too, please?”. She wanted to go beachcombing but I begged her. After promising to only take large lobster we were soon headed out.

A 150 foot long rock that just barely pokes it head above the surface was our destination. The underwater wall was about 12 or 15 feet deep with a row of coral growing along the foot of the wall. After a couple of quick reconnoitering dives I found a nice five and a half pounder. As I ascended after spearing him I looked at the wall and realized that it teeming with bugs in every nook and cranny. I swam along and grabbed another 3 good sized lobster before climbing back into the dink. Even though our larder is full it took everything I had to leave, with at least another 10 bugs in plain sight.

Just before we got back to the boat we ran into Barry, John and Mike and told them about the bugs we had just left. They had 5 bugs between them including John’s first kill. I talked them into cleaning up what we had left behind. I dropped Christy at the boat and led the 3 of them back to the wall where they were able to grab 6 of the bugs before they retreated to the safety of their lairs.

I think Barry limited out; Mike grabbed a couple including a solid 5 pounder and John took his first 2 lobster ever. It’s been a great day in the village…..