Conch Salad

By Duane Harris

IT’S ALL ABOUT CONCH: CONCH SALAD, CONCH FRITTERS,FRIED CONCH, CONCH CHOWDER, ETC., ETC.

Ilove conch, but our travel to Elbow Cay in Abaco, Bahamas, was not really about conch. This trip was about traveling with our granddaughters, Haley and Morgan Williams. They love conch and the Bahamas as much as my wife, Carol, and I do!

Every year since 2015, we have taken Haley and Morgan on a week-long trip to enjoy places beyond. We have been to Washington, DC; the Florida Keys; Barcelona, Spain; and the Bahamas. Traveling, especially when it involves fishing and diving, is in their blood. When we go to the Bahamas, their parents, Chris and Nicole Williams, have tagged along.

The girls are now seniors in college and just turned 21. Haley attends Lipscomb University on a soccer scholarship. Morgan attends Georgia Southern on a Hope Scholarship. It’s anyone’s guess how many more travel experiences we will have with these beautiful young ladies, so we want to take advantage of the opportunity whenever we can.

This past May we decided to make a return visit Elbow Cay. We were last there right before Hurricane Dorian devasted the island and surrounding areas. Marsh Harbor, the location of the airport where one lands when visiting Elbow Cay, had five feet of water over the runway. We had planned to visit last year but the island was not ready for us, so we went to Great Exuma instead. We enjoyed Great Exuma, but it is a different experience than Elbow Cay and Hope Town. We did find that on both islands the locals are wonderfully friendly, but we missed the atmosphere of Elbow Cay.

When we go to the Bahamas, we travel on Aztec Airways, a charter company out of Ft. Lauderdale. We like flying with them because they’re happy to pick us up in Ft. Pierce, which means we don’t have to make the drive into the land of crazies. You might think flying by charter to Marsh Harbor is travel reserved for the rich, but that’s not so at all; it doesn’t cost much more than flying from Brunswick to Atlanta and Atlanta to Marsh Harbor. It also has the benefit of allowing us to take fishing equipment and food to cook on site.

This year we stayed at Cheers, a home on Elbow owned by the Rentz and Ferrelle families from St. Simons Island. It’s a beautiful beach property with all the comforts of home, and includes a swimming pool! Visitors mainly travel in golf carts. While we may not be fond of them on our busy St. Simons Island thoroughfares, they are a wonderful mode of transportation on Elbow. We also always rent a boat when we’re there so we can go to the reef sites for snorkeling and making photos/ videos with our GoPro cameras. Our craft was a 23-foot Albury from Island Marine this year.

We chartered a fishing guide Captain Justin Russell of Local Boy Charters with the hopes of catching some groceries for our stay. We had a great day, catching six mahi (dolphin fish), and one-half of a blackfin tuna, the remainder of what Mr. Barracuda had enjoyed! Our ample catch provided us with several meals, including sashimi three nights in a row, and we still had tuna to bring home. Haley, Morgan and Nicole dearly love tuna, so this fresh supply was quite a treat!

A first for us during this visit was touring the Hope Town Lighthouse. You can only get to the part of Elbow where the lighthouse is located by boat. We made our way over in the rental boat to Hope Town Marina, where transit slips are available for day users. After a short walk to the lighthouse, we made the climb to the top and enjoyed the wonderful views.

Perhaps the highlight of the trip was a dive on the Sandy Cay Reef. We stopped there on our way to Pete’s Pub on Great Abaco. Shortly after we arrived at Sandy Cay and hooked to a mooring line provided for exploring the reef, we were visited by a very friendly green sea turtle. Haley took amazing videos of this beautiful animal who has obviously been fed by other visitors.

The last day of our boat rental we traveled to Mermaid Reef near Marsh Harbor. Mermaid Reef had six moorings the last time we visited. After Dorian, only one mooring remains, but we were the first boat there and used it. Mermaid Reef is home to abundant aquatic life and we observed many types of fish, including one lionfish. Because lionfish are an invasive species and do significant damage to local fish ecosystems, I told the staff at Island Marine what I had seen when I returned our rental boat to Island Marine. They asked if I killed it, because lionfish are not wanted there! Unfortunately, I did not have that opportunity because I didn’t have a spear, but I certainly would have done so had I been so equipped! While lionfish are harmful to the local fish, they have the benefit of being great to eat. Too bad they will not go into traps and do not seem to be catchable with hook and line. Spearing is about the only way to harvest them.

While waiting for our charter at Cherokee Air, the FixedBase Operator at the Marsh Harbor airport, we had another unusual encounter. We watched as Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman arrived via private jet and were whisked away by private transportation enroute to their boat headed to Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club, a very exclusive, membersonly, luxurious, secluded resort on Great Guana Cay. That was different!

I could go on and on about our visit to Elbow Cay, but all good things must come to an end, just like our trip and all that delicious fresh tuna and conch. We’re happy to have the shared memories that remain. But if you find yourself in Elbow and want conch salad, call Gypsy Girl. She’s the best!