Happy New Years and a new location

So New Years Eve morning at about 7 a.m. Joe knocks on the side of the boat and says let's go fishing. Understand that Joe is the sort of person that hauls a 14 foot alligator into a 14 foot Whaler. Ok? Mentallity reset? The man owns the South Carolina record for alligators. They have to be tied to the boat before you can kill them. Think about that. He related the experience in part by saying the beast was munching on the transom of the boat before they had it under control.
In full knowledge of this I move down the dock and hop into his home built 26 foot center console with a single 250 Yanmar. It's a good riding boat that plows through slop well. Having heard of his exploits with the alligator I elected to wear jeans and sneakers thinking there would be hooks lines and all sorts of stuff to deal with.
I was wrong.
We beat out of South Man of War for about 10 minutes and realised that the Atlantic was more than we were at that time. Water was rolling in at us and we were starting to slam so we headed back in. I got my swim suit on, you know, what I should have worn originally, since we were next going for lobster and conch on the inside. Along the way we picked up another boater and headed into the Sea of Abaco looking for lobster.
I managed to spear a small one and locate an immature conch we threw back. Never mind the nurse sharks near the lobster habitats they move off when you look at them funny. After an hour of so of this the tide run out the inlets abated and out we went. We found ourselves in about 6-8 trolling along looking for wahoo. Since Joe knew the ropes he managed all the fishing gear while I drove. Steve hung out and drank beer. Ok, he wasn't alone we all did. At 10 am we were drinking beer in 6-8 trolling for wahoo.
It was great. While we only managed to pull one in it served to make a meal for all of us and our families. Deb and I had the bonus of a lobster for use as an appetizer.
So after a morning of fishing we moved on to the evening of celebrating the New Year. Hope Town does it right. It might be small but they have all they need and more to make New Years Eve all it should be. After a great dinner with some great folks we did a bar hop around the island and then returned to Hope Town for dancing and the fireworks. All said and done it was a terrific evening capped off by a slow dink ride across Hope Town Harbour to Freedom.
Happy New Year!

And now we are at Sea Spray further South on Elbow Cay. Shelling today at low tide I almost had another lobster in a tidal pool but wound up with a piece of antenna instead.

Apologies for the webcam. Because of the way they sell wifi down here I cannot tie it into the router and let it upload photos to the website. Some day I'll get a 12v powered pan tilt and zoom webcam I can put anywhere on the boat. Hopefully next year before we get over here.