Conch Horn

Tradition holds that a conch horn should be sounded at sunset each day to herald the end of another beautiful day. There are a couple small details that make keeping that tradition a challenge.

First, you have to have a conch shell. And one made into a horn. It turns out that’s not as easy as it looks. Conch shell is incredibly tough. Tough enough to wear through more than a couple dremel cut-off blades to cut off the tip of the conch shell. Then once the tip is cut off, the inside of the hole needs to be cleaned out – there goes another cut-off blade. Once the tip is cut off and the hole is augured out – voila – a conch horn.

At least in the hands of someone who knows how to blow one, it’s a conch horn. In the hands of some of us, it’s mostly a funny sounding noise maker. It would have been helpful to have played the trumpet or trombone at some point in the past.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way – and a couple youtube videos, of course. Now we can make at least a passable attempt each evening at sunset to join the chorus in each anchorage.

Did you know that the US Coast Guard accepts a conch horn as a certified distress signaling device? That’s how loud a conch horn is! So the anchorages sound pretty amazing at sunset.

 

But if not…