Our sailing day from Shroud
Cay to Warderick Wells Cay was met with wind on the nose, which meant we were “in
the irons.” This caused additional
sailing time as we had to tack away from the rum line in order to sail to our
destination, adding at least a couple of hours
to our planned trip.
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Dulcinea heading to Warderick Wells Cay (Photography compliments of our friends on s/v Sanctuary) |
During that time, we hailed Exuma Park
Control to establish a mooring location.
The park headquarters is located in Warderick Wells Cay and there is
limited anchorage. Because of the amount
of coral and sea life, Exuma Park provides decent mooring anchorage at a reasonable
cost. We picked up mooring ball number
18, which was deep in the channel and that meant for an easy nights sleeping
with no rolling anchorage. After Sherry missed the mooring ball and we lost the
boat hook while attempting to pick up the mooring ball, we were finally able to
grab it and settle in with a double painter.
Our water quantity was getting low so we decided it was time to make use
of the water maker. We had installed a
Katadyne 80E water maker prior to our initial departure. This is a great little unit as it produces 3½
gallons of drinkable fresh water straight from seawater using a reverse osmosis
system. We topped off 5 gallons by the
time we had the dinghy loaded and ready to go exploring.
The park headquarters was established in the
1950s to help the fragile Bahamian sea life. It is a nonprofit trust
organization that ensures local poaching is not taken to extremes.
Snorkeling was followed by a hike to Boo Boo
Hill, which we thought meant “Boo” as a boo boo to your boat; however, after
reading up on it, there was a sailboat that wrecked near the point, losing all
souls on board and it is rumored that on a full moon you can hear the souls cry
out, thus, giving it the name, “Boo Boo Hill.”
The big attraction to Boo Boo Hill is to leave a marking of your
sailboat so that if a wandering soul decides to board your vessel, they will
know the name. We picked up a piece of
driftwood, made our mark and left it on Boo Boo Hill for any wandering souls
wanting to hitch a ride aboard the s/v Dulcinea. Sherry was greeted by a visitor on this hike as she looked down to find a 2 foot brown racer snake fearlessly slithering along the path next to her. He went about his way and she went hers. It seems as if the wildlife here know they are protected.
After a wonderful day of sailing, snorkeling
and hiking, we were beat tired, but were blessed with an incredible sunset that
took our breaths away.
Today, we awoke to a beautiful sunrise and
Sherry’s wonderful warm blueberry muffins and yogurt. A hearty breakfast was necessary for
another day full of adventures.
Warderick Wells Cay was once a pirates’ hideaway. We laid out the map, took our bearings and
ventured to find the Pirates’ Lair and Capture Beach. This meant a very long dinghy ride around the
southern tip of the island. As we
rounded the tip, we were in awe of the beautiful waters that separated the
cays. With a little more discovery, we
were able to locate Capture Beach and land the dinghies. We loaded the backpacks with water and headed
out to find the Pirate's Lair. The trail
was rough and rugged; however, we were able to locate it. It was quite interesting to find the Pirate’s
Lair and that it had its own freshwater source.
This was the perfect place for a hideaway. We continued exploring and walking around the
entire southern part of the island. The day
was ended with a cruiser’s happy hour on south beach, under a canopy. We met lots of new friends and shared lots of
exciting stories.
What made the happy
hour really happy was as the sun set, the Hutia came out. Hutia are a non-native marsupial that was
introduced to the islands that looks like a large gerbil. They are fun to watch as they run around on
the beach and literally will come up to you to beg for food.
Our worst end to this
was that we drank too much wine and forgot to bring the spotlight for returning
to the boat after dark. Sherry managed to
gracefully land a faceplant in a bush while attempting to untie the dinghy from
a tree and we were left to find our way back to the boat with no lights in
shark filled waters.
All is well that
ends well and we are safely tucked away in our little Dulcinea.