My knee still hurts, but I thought I'd try and swim some to see if I could stretch it out a little. Rather than swim with no real direction or purpose, I gathered up my Bozo Deluxe hunting outfit and dinghied to a nearby rock formation. Once anchored and properly ensconced in my dive gear, over the side I went. It was pretty cold, but with 40 or 50 foot visibility. I was only hunting in 10 to 15 feet of water so the diving was pretty easy.
On my first dive down I spied hundreds of fish swimming to and fro. Almost all of them were edible variants, but the average size was only 6 inches so I left them in peace. On a subsequent dive I swam into an open cave, rolled over on my back and looked up only to be greeted by twenty or thirty spider crabs.
"Ahhhh!" I yelled in surprise.
"Ahhhh!" they yelled in fear.
Crabs began dropping from the roof and running for cover as I retreated from the cave to breathe. On the surface I implemented crab collection plan C, armed my crab whacker and dove back down. The spider crabs had manned positions near their heavy weapons just inside the cave, but I quickly shot the two guys nearest the door and returned my dinghy.
Two minutes later I was back, this time I went hand to hand (claw) with a large spud with monstrous claws. I was too close for ranged weapons (my spear) so I switched to my dive knife. I tried to strike several times, but the crab was some sort of super ninja crab and he deftly parried my blows. Running short on air I made the emergency decision to implement the George W Bush III technique.
Using my free hand and waving it to the side of the crab I said "Oh look at the pretty birdy". The crab was obviously a Republican because sure enough he looked left and then I drove my knife through his head. Thanks "W", I alway knew that would come in handy someday.
Over the course of the next ten minutes, I gathered four more of the biggest guys I could find before my 5 gallon dinghy bucket was filled to the brim and I decided to call it quits. I upped anchor and returned to the mother ship.
Amy and Marley helped me off load our crab tonnage. One of the crabs was still alive and Marley proceeded to chase it around the cockpit. We broke out the pressure cooker and both laughed when we discovered that we could only get two of the crabs in the pot at a time. I was able to do one, final round of three, but I had to smash the last and smallest fellow with a small rubber mallet to get the lid closed. Fortunately it only takes 10 minutes to steam the crabs so within an hour they were all done ad ready to be picked.
About the time we were done cooking, doctor Bob from Navigator showed up to look at my knee. He poked and prodded and inspected and detected before determining that my knee is bruised and has some fluid on it. His prognosis was that I will live and amputation is not required. Lucky for me.
He wrapped my knee up with a "Professionals Choice - Sports Medical Product" knee brace which unfortunately for me has velcro straps and now I will have at least a single ferret stuck to me for the next week. As an aside, I did ask if I should have two beers and then call him in the morning. He said no.
Payment for the house call was one jumbo crustacean and a 5 minute lesson on how to disassemble said crab. I think Obama might want to look into the whole "crustacean for quality health care" thing back home in the U.S. It seems to work pretty well anyway.
The rest of the day passed pretty quietly. In the early afternoon we moved to the north end of the anchorage in anticipation of a weak cold front passing through. There were only four boats anchored up north when we got there, but the first wave of cruising boats coming over for the Georgetown to Long Island regatta arrived before dark and now there are 40 boats anchored here.
Tomorrow we're going to move back down to the town anchorage and do some final provisioning before we take off on Tuesday. More to follow, end of line.