 Port Credit Marine Survey & Yacht Delivery |
15. Provisions and Free supplements |
Port Credit Marine Survey & Yacht Delivery |
15. Provisions and Free supplements |
| This one is simple…..pack every square millimeter
of your boat with everything you can
imagine
eating in the next nine months ! Our
first
trip south rapidly decayed into a hunt
for
the next Wal-Mart, Food Lion or Piggily
Wiggily.
Curiously many anchorages are several miles
from shopping centers ! After clambering
up a soggy embankment and slogging
two miles
in the rain only to turn around with
11 bags
of groceries for the hike back to the
boat
one realizes the wisdom of my message.
To
be sure there are several anchorages
with
convenient shopping nearby but again
you
do not want your destinations determined
by your need for HP sauce, which you
won't
find In the USA anyway. Almost every US supermarket chain has a free “preferred customer” card, get one at every store and keep it. These cards will genuinely save you from 8 – 15% |
|
Our favourite US chain is "Piggly
Wiggly”
These stores are generally found in black or Hispanic neighborhoods,
sell parts of pigs I didn’t know pigs
had
and are inexpensive. They also carry
lots
of other foods I’ve never heard of
( I like
to experiment ) which is why we like
them
so much. They will also give you a
ride back
to the dinghy dock. If you run low before crossing to the Bahamas stock up again in Florida. On Grand Bahama prices are moderately higher than the US but prices in the Abacos are much higher. e.g. Conch was $2.50lb. in Lucaya but $8.00lb. in Marsh Harbour. Beer, pop, cookies and snack foods are very expensive anywhere in the Bahamas so stock up on these in Florida where beer is almost as cheap as water. Rum prices are pretty good throughout the Bahamas and there are some very cheap off brands, they are called “off-brands” for a reason however. Free food - If you are a seafood fanatic like me you can eat very well on this trip with little effort and very little equipment. A heavy rod and a trolling reel, heavy rubber gloves, two types of lures with 100lb. test and a pole spear for lobster although you can catch lobster with just a pair of heavy rubber gloves as Caribbean spiny lobster do not have claws. |
 Tom Assenmacher shovels oysters on to the table in his front yard on the Yeocomico River. Tom & Kaye run the Alberg 37 Association website  Huge Georgia clams next to my hat  Delaware bluefish |
| Oysters, barnacles, conch, mussels, crabs,
lobster, mahi, sea bass, flounder,
grouper
and several different types of snapper
are
available with a little effort. I have
no
interest in sport fishing but do have
a great
interest in sport fish eating. Whenever
we
are in salt water we drag a lure behind
us,
we tried dragging it in front but that
didn't
work. Even at 8 knots we manage to snag something. I know nothing
about fishing but it never made sense
to
me to troll at 3 knots for fish that
can
hit 30 miles per hour so we never slow
down
to fish. We use only two kinds of lures, a 4” plastic squid or a 6” cedar plug and both of these can be purchased at any Wal-Mart. We never use bigger lures because The effort and mess of cleaning a 30lb. mahi is just too much. A 10lb. mahi is the perfect size for cleaning and the work involved in getting it aboard is reasonable. We trail a 100lb. test line with a steel leader (mahi have incredible teeth ) not because I want to catch anything that weighs 100lbs. but because when we do get a bite we don’t slow down to fight it we just drag it aboard. Sometimes if you are lucky lunch will jump aboard. We have picked flying fish off the decks and were once bombarded by a school of squid jumping into the dinghy. From the Delaware down through Florida, blue crabs are easy to catch. Take 100’ string and tie on any kind of left over bone from lunch (pork chops, chicken wings) every 10’, cast out the string and have a beer. Haul the string in every 15 min. and have your 5gal. bucket ready. The trick to landing these aggressive little creatures is to have your net in the water before you haul them up or they will release the bait as soon as they see the net coming towards them. Blue crabs are also known as soft shell crabs when they have molted and can then be eaten whole. In their hard shell state it takes a lot of them to make a meal. Barry, the great lobster hunter from Burlington taught me how to pole spear lobster; unfortunately I shot more rocks than lobster and found it easier to just grab the little buggers by the antennae. Note: Bahamian fishing laws are chaning constantly. Play by their rules, it's their country. Lobster are found under rocks, ledges, and along break walls. Often all you will see are long antennae sticking out…grab them ! If you get both antennae you have a better chance of holding on. We found many lobster in 5 to 6’ of water very close to shore. Take them immediately back to the dinghy as small sharks or barracudas may try to steal your lunch. |
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| One of the advantages of using a pole spear is that when speared you can hold the lobster away from your body just in case a small thief decides to steal it. You will see sharks in the Bahamas and I have always left when they arrived but many just ignore them and never seem to be bothered, I am not that brave. | |
 Bahamian spiny lobster |
 Florida blue crab , easy catch |
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