Dunmore Town - no pics low bandwidth

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 another 11111 day


Today we shared dinghy rides (4 boats/2 dinghies) over to the Ferry Dock to catch the high-speed ferry over to Dunmore Town. It was interesting to talk to one young lady on the dock while we were waiting for the ferry. She was sitting in a golf cart waiting to unload the ferry while passengers disembarked and reloaded so I struck up a conversation with her. I learned that the boats that are so well maintained here are so well maintained because the crew shares a vested interest in the boat. Each member owns equal shares in profits, and debts so it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep the fleet in tiptop condition. Everyone takes a great deal of pride in their ownership and the work ethic on the boats definitely shows. Their biggest customer that buys most of the lobster is Red Lobster. I loved hearing that and that whenever anybody from here goes to the states, they always try to eat at a Red Lobster. I had to tell her that it was my favorite birthday place to eat, which also pleased her! I neglected to mention that me and Laura used to get the "shrimp feast" though, not the lobster feast.

The ferry took us through the Devil’s Backbone and over to Dunmore Town. It was hot out and the ride was quite refreshing and the view of the reefs from the ferry was informative since you could see all the reefs from the top deck. Some areas where incredibly rocky & you could see waves breaking on the reefs quite close to the ferry. We disembarked near the Customs office and walked over to the Atlantic side of the island. All of the chairs and umbrellas there are for rent, and there were horses for rent, if you wanted to ride a horse along the beach. You could actually smell them and see evidence of their presence along the path to the beach before seeing them. Aurora and us forgot our swimming suits but Azaya and Georgia E had theirs and went for a swim. The water felt great to my toes and feet and I imagine it was delicious to swim in. I walked along the pink sand beach in search of sea beans but I’d already known that I wouldn’t find any. The beaches were very well groomed. At one point while we were standing in the surf zone chatting with Stu (Georgia E) I actually thought I might have found one. Poking out of the sand in the water I could see a white stripe with a darker color beneath it. I wasn’t sure if it was a bean (kinda light) or a pretty shell of some sort. When I bent over to retrieve it from in the sand, I discovered it was Stu’s toe!!! How embarrassing! But I guess instead of finding my first sea bean, I found my first “sea toe”. Thanks Stu!

We found a great little Deli to eat lunch in with great food and in huge sizes, then walked along looking at all the little shops and houses. One take-away food place had a mound (okay a few mounds) of conch shells for the taking. I picked out 4 lovely ones that I think will make excellent horns or just great shells & Tony will take them for his kids. They (Georgia-E) also picked up some wonderful looking conch salad for dinner and after a beer we headed back to the high-speed ferry to go back to Spanish Wells. It was an all around, very nice day spent with great people over at Dunmore Town.

Back on the boat I wasn’t all that hungry but remembered Wayne likes dinner – that’s his hungry time, when I heard Mary-Clare starting the beat conch over on her boat. She wanted to know if I wanted her to cook ours up too (she still had the ones we bought in town in her freezer) and bring it over? I said sure – I’ll make some coleslaw & she said I’ll bring some rice too! I discovered that my cabbage wasn’t very good anymore so chopped up some celery with pineapple cheese, carrots and cucumbers, then made some dipping sauce for the conch. It was nice to have them over and I’d commented that we’d calculated the mileage to Ship Channel and Allens Cay. That it was 45 and 50 miles. Wayne & Mary didn’t really want to go over it so it was just as good that I couldn’t find my data. It was a long but nice day.