Warderick Wells - Saturday Feb 9th
The Exumas Land and Sea Park encompasses 22 miles and is HQ'd in Warderick Wells. The Park HQ consists of a building staffed by Cherry and a Bahamian police officer, who each morning at 9 am would broadcast to mariners over the VHF radio, the park rules and accept requests for mooring reservations. We called in and as a blow was forecast, we picked up mooring #19 in the southern mooring field, took a fresh water shower (first time in 5 days yea!) and around 5:30 pm, we dinghied to the beach by the park warden's office for BYO cocktail party with fellow cruisers. We were late arrivers as the party wound down soon after sunset (about 6:00) but we managed to see our first hutia - the native rodent that is about the size of a rabbit. We made it back to the boat just as it started to rain. Funny thing here, the rain showers don't last long, often a single cloud burst so we'd open/close/open/close/... the hatches until we went to bed. Intermittent showers and high winds continued all night long and our water tank sloshed with every wave making a racket (it's located right under our bed) so neither of us got much sleep. Oh well.
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| Skeleton of whale at Waderick Wells that died from ingesting plastics |
Warderick Wells - Sunday Feb, 10th
We experienced the "blow holes" at high tide on Warderick Wells. This is where large waves crash into the porous rock and in some cases, the porous rock acts as a chimney propelling the incoming wave into a mist that shoots up through the hole into the sky roaring like a lion. High tide (slack tide) was also time to explore a sunken boat and two other snorkeling spots nearby. Then, after lunch, there was a shore expedition to the ruins of a loyalist plantation close to Beryl's beach. Apparently, around the revolution, some loyal to England thought they might make a go of life in the Bahamas with their slaves but it proved harder than they thought. The land here is rough rock (definitely need shoes to walk on) and sand, dense vegetation consisting of short palm trees, poison wood shrubs, and tiny lizards and hutia - but nothing much else is around, not even shore birds.
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| Living the dream |
O'Brien's Cay - Monday Feb 11th
We moved on to O'Brien's Cay and you've never seen so many shades of turquoise in the water blending into white. On the Exuma bank, depths are typically 12 feet but shallow to 1 foot or less as one approaches the Cay. The park rangers onboard "Privateer' who came by to collect our mooring fee at O'Brien's Cay were from the Newport War College, Newport RI. They volunteer their time for a month and in return, get to live in paradise free of charge. Anyway, O'Brien's Cay is home to prime snorkeling spots - the "aquarium" and a sunken Cesna plane wreck. The aquarium was aptly named and was our best snorkeling to date. About 50 6-inch fish would surround you seemingly as curious about us as we were about them. They'd swim right up to your mask. We then dinghied around O'Brien's Cay finding a 'drift snorkel' spot that was pretty good too. This is when one person stays in the dinghy while the other person swims because the current through the cuts can run a few knots. Then, around 5 pm, about 45 min before low tide, we moved around to Bell's Cay retracing our GPS route used to get into O'Brien's Cay, and just as we were about to drop anchor, Juno experienced her keel on the bottom for the first time. Thankfully the current helped push us off the sandy bottom so no harm was done.
Cambridge Cay - Tuesday Feb 12th
We hoped to catch the caves at Rocky Dundas at low tide (8:30 am) but the SE winds made it too rough so we sailed to Cambridge Cay, picked up a mooring, and headed to Paradise Beach where we snorkeled Tom's Elkhorn Reef, picked up beach plastic, did yoga, saw our first blue hole just off the beach, then headed to a sandbar for a social gathering of cruisers at 4:30 pm meeting John and Jill on 'Moonshadow' from Lexington, MA. Still getting used to fingers and toes constantly feeling waterlogged and all pruney.
Compass Cay - Wed. Feb 13th
After a bit of tidying the boat, we snorkeled the reef at the southern entrance to Cambridge Cay adjacent to the sand bar and site of yesterday's social gathering, walked to Bell Rock, then sailed on the Exuma Sound (eastern side, deep water) to Compass Cay where we rowed the dinghy to shore and walked a mangrove to "Rachael's Bubbles" where the waves crash over the rocks at high tide, forming a pool and creating a "bubble bath". While there, we met Mark who worked on a luxury yacht. This proved extremely fortunate as when we got back to the dinghy, there was no way we could row against the current back to Juno 100 yards from shore. Mark came to our rescue and towed us out to Juno in his not so small tender. We then picked up and moved to Fowl Cay for the night so as to be close to the Rocky Dundas Thursday morning.
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| Bell Rock, Cambridge Cay |
Rocky Dundas and Staniel Cay - Thurs. Feb 14th
The weather was much settled, light winds and low tide, so we set out for the caves at Rocky Dundas at 8:30 am. There were two caves that you'd swim into with stalactites which were pretty cool. Unfortunately we lost our bailer for the dinghy while there. Then we sailed to Staniel Cay, arriving around noon, just as some intense rain fell while we were circling the gas dock so we decided to skip the gas and find a place to drop anchor for the night. When the rain stopped, we dinghied to the Staniel Cay Yacht Club with our jerry cans for diesel and water. SCYC is more of a marina than a yacht club. On our way back to Juno, the dinghy got stuck in forward gear. This caused us to do some troubleshooting and plan to find a mechanic on the island in the morning and rendered our dinghy out of commission for the remainder of the day. Unfortunately Sarah had hoped to catch the island's Valentine's Day barbecue benefitting the library, and was very disappointed that we'd be eating spaghetti on-board for our Valentine's Day dinner.
Thunderball Grotto (Staniel Cay) - Fri. Feb 15th
We thought we'd head to shore early to seek out a mechanic and wouldn't you know it, the dinghy engine slipped right into neutral and all gears were working as expected. Our troubles seem to miraculously fix themselves so we carried on, visiting the Thunderball Grotto - site of a James Bond film from the 60's, at the optimal low tide. It was a snorkeling adventure unlike any we had experienced as you swim into large rocks that have been scoured out on the inside by rainwater, revealing a huge cave inside that opens to the sky at the top, and is filled with fish.
You find yourself swimming into darkness and then you surface inside in an incredible huge room with stalagtites hanging from the ceiling and walls. On our way out, Sarah saw a black tipped reef shark so we made a b-line for the dinghy and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at anchor aboard Juno. With a clear night forecast, Sarah slept in the cockpit under the moonlight and stars.
We ran about half of Staniel Cay in the morning for some exercise, ending up by the little airstrip, headed back to the boat for a quick dip, and one more visit to Thunderball Grotto.
Then, we drove Juno around the point to the Bay of Pigs, anchored with about 30 other boats and saw the 'swimming pigs' that hang out on Big Major Cay. We had a few meager celery stalks which a pig or two enjoyed but many visitors came with buckets of vegetable scraps causing the pigs to greet each boat that arrives by swimming out to it. The cutest were the little piglets sleeping in the shade. Winds were light and variable and so we just hung out and re-located back to Staniel Cay for the night.
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| Harry, Bob Ross, and a Big Major pig |
Fantastic adventure! Sure wish that we had done something like that. Obviously, your next boat will have a gyro stabilized sleeping platform. B&L
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