CXCIV – Conch Salad

Friday February 27th, 2015 – Day three North Bimini

Strawberry-Peach-Malted-Smoothie-4The day began like all days on board sailing vessels. I listened to Chris Parker’s weather broadcast, I made coffee, we made plans for the day. Once Mango got up we had a breakfast of smoothies created by the infamous Blend Whacker. The roar of that beast firing up turns heads as far as you can see. We had some Bananas on board that were at the end of their life. When I touched them to take them off their hook they peeled themselves and plopped into my hands…perfect for the Blend Whacker. I took part in this smoothie thing only because they did not add all the dust, powders and voodoo stuff that Rick does. Ours this day had strawberries (only $6.50 for a package of fresh strawberries) the aforementioned bananas, some Mango made yogurt and several secret ingredients. It wasn’t bad. I couldn’t help thinking that it might be better with a dash of coconut rum and one of those little umbrellas.

After we finished our smoothies showers were had ashore at the shower and wildlife facility. Our day was on. The ladies decided to go walk about. They had an appointment with Charlie to pick up some bread and some coconut bread at 12:30. They left at 10:00 so I figured they had something else up their sleeves. While they were gone I considered the list of chores to do on FRACAS…after several minutes of consideration of that I moved on and watched The Black List… I unloaded one of the Circus bikes and thought I could get an atta boy if i met said women and carried their freight back to the boats. I cycled all the way North to the gates of New Miami (Casino etc.) and did not meet up with them. On the way back (think left) I saw them walking ahead heading back in the general direction of the boats.

Each was carrying some booty in shopping sacks and Karen had a covered dish and she was carrying the dish like it contained Plutonium. (I shouldn’t use words like Plutonium). As I sneaked up behind them I used my best disguised voice and said “Do you know where I can get women”. They are both alpha women so they tensed, turned and prepared to attack. Oh its just you. Sounded just like when I come home and ML is in bed asleep and awakes as i near the bed and she says…”Oh its just you”. Anyhow…

They had spent over an hour at the North Bimini Conch Institute also known as Joe’s. They learned the entire Conch process from the catching, luring the thing out of the shell with cash, cleaning, cutting and finally preparing the Plutonium or in this case Conch Salad. Only a certain part of the thing inside the shell is used for the salad. The other conch stuff is mixed with FRITTER stuff or something else on the menu. Not sure what it cost them to attend their undergrad course in Conch.

The Queen Conch is a herbivorous snail/marine mollusk. They take about 7 years to mature and the first year they stay under the sand at the bottom of the sea during daylight and come out at night to eat. Lots of things like to eat them, including some sharks and turtles. They make poor house pets. They don’t do much and conch racing has been banned. So they fritter away their days on the bottom of the sea. Harvesting conch is banned in Florida.

In the video above a conch has captured a woman and is dragging her back to the sea.

When they returned we had a nice lunch of the conch salad and some of the Cinnamon bread they had purchased.

Tomorrow we will go to the north end and visit the casino and the development. We will ride the free shuttle to the casino… It looks like we can get out of here on Sunday/Monday so we may begin preparations to leave.

Breakfast is upon me so I will do another entry later….

 

 

 

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