 |
| Leanne was justifiably proud of her efforts in whipping up Oysters Kilpatrick. |
20/2/2014; Sampling the local Fare
We have been in Streaky bay
for a week now. Most of the past week has been catching up with sleep,
provisioning the boat and for the ladies the odd dozen loads of washing at the
Caravan Park.
Our Sailing around Australia Adventures on Easy Tiger have taken a
back seat as we all recover from the six day bight crossing. No-one has
mentioned moving on to the next anchorage as yet. We have however been offered
a drive down to reconnoiter both Sceale and Venus bays on Sunday. These will
most likely be our next stopovers.
But for now we are happy to try out the local produce. Leanne bought
3 dozen oysters back to Easy Tiger after one of her washing missions. After quickly googling some recipes, she
cooked up 18 Kilpatrick style, the others were devoured raw with a coating of
lemon.
Very nice they were , but they only seemed to last a matter of
minutes.
Brian (B2) on Zofia had some luck trying out the groups new fishing
method. He managed to land (be given) some King George whiting fillets. He did
well too, to “catch” them already filleted and in a plastic bag. (see previous
blog on fishing).
After being told by Killa that there were heaps of crabs around our
boat, I dragged the crab pots out for Leanne who was sure she would catch a
feed in no time. After catching some
small trumpeter type fish and chopping them into bait size pieces, Leanne hung
the crab pots off the back of the boat, reassuring me that it would be crabs
for dinner.
After several pulls of the nets, we started to realize that we must
be doing something wrong. No crabs. Not even the sign of a crab. When we
discussed this with Killa, he thought it might have something to do with the
overcast day, or with all the rain they have had, maybe there is too much fresh
water in the bay. It seems fisherman always have a story.
To rub salt into her wound, Leanne got one of the crab pot ropes
tangled around Easy Tiger’s rudder. I didn’t know where to look for fear that I
might giggle at her run of bad luck. She
had to strip of to bras and knickers, don the face mask and snorkel and jumped
in to untangle the rope. As she did she was muttering something about “might as
well get eaten by a shark or something” Fortunately the white pointers of
streaky bay were off duty that day, although I have never seen Leanne swim so
fast as she made a bee line for Easy Tigers swim ladder.
Today, as it hadn’t rained for a few days, it was sunny and the
water was a still as dry cement, we thought we might have another go, using our
dinghy to put the pots into several nearby sand patches. Success. We now have 5
really good Blue swimmer crabs in the fridge ready for lunch tomorrow.
In fact with the afternoon south easterly sea breeze here, it has
been difficult for B2 to get to the bakery. He has managed well under pressure
though. He tells me he doesn’t think the sausage rolls here will make the top
20.
All the way across the bight we urged the other boats on with
promises of the big lunch to celebrate our crossing at the Streaky Bay Hotel.
Well we haven’t done that yet. We started in the other day but straight after
lunch the wind picked up and the B’s were worried about their boats dragging
anchor.
So we hastily rushed off from the pub, to jump in the dinghies and
fly out to the boats. Doh, no dinghies to be seen. We had all pulled them in
near the jetty and dragged our dinghies up on to the sand. Turns out, though
not far enough. Little did we know that there was a 2 metre tide! We had parked our dinghies at low tide, which
came in while we had lunch, sweeping our dinghies off the shore and out to sea.
As happens often in country towns, some young kids who were swimming
near by had caught Urchin’s dinghy and tied it to the jetty. Zofia’s dinghy was
still trying to make a getaway, and drifted tantalizingly close to the shore.
Should I swim for it or not. I was just about to go in, when Urchin crew zoomed
past in their recovered dinghy and grabbed Zofia’s.
Of course, Easy Tiger’s naughty dinghy was miles out to sea. In fact
you needed 20/20 vision to see it as a speck on the horizon. B1 and Maree hurtled off after it, and I
jumped in to Zofia’s dinghy with B2 to make up the posse.
After severely scolding the dinghy all the way back to the shore, I
saw that the monohull had in fact dragged anchor and could see Eva still on
shore. After a quick all girls aboard the dinghy, I delivered Eva out to Zofia
so that she could help B2 re anchor.
The next morning I went to Killa’s shop and bought a couple of
Grapple hook type anchors that we had been advised to use in these parts. I
have then worked out a system to be able to deploy 2 anchors off Easy Tiger in
weedy areas or for strong wind events.
After our anchoring adventures using the anchor witch, (see many
previous blogs) I can’t wait to see how we go putting 2 anchors down.
I haven’t even looked at weather report for several days. Too busy
catching crabs and going to Killa’s to get rainwater or getting some oysters
from another boatie called Skeeter. I think we may well be in Streaky Bay,
catching crabs and feeding ourselves cheap fresh oysters for a while yet.
 |
| Streaky Bay this morning. No wind. Water as still as concrete. |
No comments:
Post a Comment