Swimming pigs and slippery fish
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Tue 24 May 2011 12:52
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As promised, there are swimming pigs in this
anchorage. We dinghied round the corner to a small beach and there, after a
little coaxing, two large porkers emerged from the undergrowth to stand
knee-deep in the water. We got as close as we dared (they have been known to try
scrambling aboard unwary tenders) and chucked them apple quarters. The pink
beast was concentrating so hard on staying afloat that he kept missing the
apples, but the large brown affair hoovered them up most effectively. Alex was
delighted, as swimming pigs were one of her Bahamas 'must-sees'.
Just moments before this photo was taken, we got
into a fish on the rod, which I was using to troll from Jemime the dinghy. He
was a little fellow - perhaps a couple of pounds - and some sort of striped reef
fish. I landed him successfully (a first with the rod and tackle) but he was not
destined for the grill. As we returned to Summer Song, we ran into the friendly
Americans we'd met in the yacht club the night before. There was some chat about
getting the outboard going again and about the fishing rod. I held aloft the
slippery fish in triumph, only to have it squirm from my grasp and fall back
into the sea. Our friends clearly thought this the funniest thing they'd seen
for days and I felt like a prize nincompoop. They were genuinely worried that
we'd just lost our only supplies over the side and offered us steak, which we
waved away. Things looked up shortly afterwards, though, when a Dutchman who'd
caught three large mahi-mahi simultaneously offered us a bag of
fillets.
Alex reflected that my stripy gurnard would have
been a poor comparison to our splendid feast of mahi.
It's another overcast day, and we're planning to
wind our way north over the bank to some much reputed snorkelling spots at Rocky
Dundas (an island that sounds like a biscuit) and Cambridge Cay, where we'll
have to put away the fishing gear for a couple of days as we enter the Exuma
Marine Park.
Swimming pigs
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