Today we hung out at Isla Cavada all day. Melissa did next to nothing, but Dave decided to tackle trying to fix the 2.5HP engine. Again. Mike had lent him a fuel filtration gadget so that Dave could clean the gas in the dingy tank as this was Dave’s best guess as to the source of the contamination that keeps messing up the carburetor. Sure enough, he found water, and sludge in the gas. And he found that the small fuel filter inside the engine had disintegrated entirely, puking its guts into the carburetor. This time the carburetor was so messed up Dave wasn’t sure he could get the float valve unstuck. Eventually though he was able to get it all cleaned out, and with the newly filtered fuel, it seems to be back to its old self.
Mike went diving and found a ton of HUGE conch on the bottom. He brought up a half a dozen of them with hopes of being able to eat them. First you gotta get them out of their shells though. Mike had a book that gave directions. You have to pound a hole in the shell using a rock hammer, and then using a knife, cut the meat away from the shell. Then in theory the whole animal falls out of the shell. Mike called Dave and told him he was going to toss the conch back as he didn’t have a rock hammer. But, as it happened, Dave had a rock hammer aboard Apsaras. Why? Not even Dave knows the answer. The only reason Dave even had a rock hammer was that Curtis used to whack rocks in the yard with it when he was little. Somehow it had made its way into the tool box we brought aboard. So mike headed over with the conch and the instruction book.
Alas the final score was conch 2, boaters 0. Despite numerous attempts we couldn’t get the suckers out of their shells. And not wanting to destroy a ton of them needlessly, Mike tossed the remaining conch back into the water.
