Our Last Two Exumas

The Exuma chain within the central Bahamas consists of several hundred separate islands, of which we have ended up visiting only ten. Our last two were Warderick Wells and Highbourne Cay, a study in opposites.  Having become more comfortable with sailing on the skinny (shallow) water of the bank, we jumped to each of them on that side. The trip to Warderick Wells was mostly motoring for its 18 miles due to light winds.

Warderick Wells is at the heart of a huge Bahamian National Land and Sea Park: NO fishing, conching, lobstering or shelling; the sign says: Take only photos and memories; leave only footprints.

Moorings are $20 per night for a boat our size, and wifi, is an additional $10 and limited to 100 megabytes. But if, having bought the wifi, you can’t get or keep the signal,  you are out of luck. Reservations are taken the day before during the Park Ranger’s morning discussion on VHF channel 9 at 9 am. The Ranger, Darcy, first asks for boats which are leaving to call in. She wishes each a safe passage and adds their mooring number to her inventory of available ones. Next she reads off her list of boats that made reservations the day before. Then she asks for any boat not on that list, who wants a reservation for tonight or tomorrow to state their name, length and draft. She then tells everyone to hold on for a few minutes while she figures out which boats get plugged into which holes.  Her system of priorities in not known to me. And finally she tells each boat which field, and mooring number they have been assigned, and how to get to it. Most everyone wants to be in the North mooring field. It is a single line of moorings in the center of a long “S” shaped channel of dark blue (deep enough) which is only wide enough for one boat to swing on its mooring

and is closer to the Park Ranger’s office where you go to pay and to buy souvenirs. There is no food sold and no place to drop off garbage. We were assigned to the South or Emerald Rock

mooring field, which is more than one mile away by dink, including a shallow spot where your propeller will either hit sand or rock if you go at low tide. I hit both, one going and one coming back, without significant harm. But it was a good mooring with seven feet of water at low tide and very well protected by the island from the easterly winds that battered the east side of the island. Above is Lene looking out at the fleet, include ILENE, center, with Emerald Rock to the right. The rock, as are many in the Exumas, is undercut at water level on all sides:

We stayed in the park for three nights because Chris Parker, the weather guru, whose daily (except Sunday) broadcasts we listen to at 6:30 am on SSB channel 4045, accurately predicted very strong winds for those days. Chris begins with a request for any emergencies, moves on to give a general discussion of troughs, ridges and fronts that cause the weather and then gives a broadcast for each part of the Bahamas and portion of the US coast from Key West to Norfolk, and finally answers questions from boaters who subscribe to his service who tell him that they are planning on going from A to B and ask which of the next few days will make for the best passage. He is a treasure to all the boaters of the region. We started listening to him at 8 am a few months ago, when he does the same thing for the Caribbean on a different channel.

What is there to do there besides rest and relax? There was a BYOB party on the beach near the office one night. The park provides a big cooler of ice. 

Everyone else, about 20 people that night, bring beverages and a snack to share. It was sort of like the George Town bonfire, but without the fire -- and without the sand flies. I met a young couple from British Columbia. Graduating from college in this labor market, they decided to sail for a few years until the economy picks up. Many of the folks were southerners and I pointed out that the couple from New Zealand were from the furthest south of all of us, and that I was a Yankee. Ilene elected to stay aboard for this party, fearful of getting wet from spray during the dinghy ride in the wind.  I forgot the corkscrew and one of the good ole southern boys whose boat was in the nearby northern mooring field went back to his boat and brought his for me to use.

The other thing to do was hike. We took two of them on different days and though not long in mileage, they were rugged for the climbing over rocks that the trails consisted of. One hike was to BooBoo Hill, the island’s highest, 57 feet above sea level, whose name has to do with ghost story legends. Here is the view east with my shirt being rippled by the wind. Next is the east coast looking south.

The trail was well marked and crossed a flat area which was partly underwater when we came back, making a slightly longer trip. The rangers office is the house in the background. This area was a nursery for the three varieties of mangroves, whose differences were explained by intelligent signage. 

Very near the top of the hill were the blow holes: the waves crashing on the coast below the cliffs

 had bored holes to the top of the cliffs. When waves rushed in, a lot of air and sea mist gets caught and blown up through these holes.

Our second hike was to the south where an old plantation and a wall across the island lie in ruins 

and to the north over hills covered with eroded rocks, past Termite Beach to Emerald Beach. 

The flat plates of rugged rock are not entirely stable and one gets the sound of walking in New York City on a loose manhole cover.

The voyage from Warderick Wells to Highbourne Cay was 32 miles of easy sailing, on a starboard reach with the wind mostly at or aft of the beam. We were doing seven knots with double reefed main and small jib and with small waves. The marina’s entry is marked through the reefs with two ranges: line yourself up with the first pair of landmarks and follow that path in until the next two landmarks, on your port side, are lined up and then follow them in. The Marina was big, modern, well run and expensive, but permitted us to unload our six bags of smelly garbage and sold us internet with sufficient megabytes, and it worked -- with a strong signal.  Water, made on the island by reverse osmosis (desalinization) would have cost fifty cents per gallon. No thanks! And the same to your electricity.  We did dine at their lovely restaurant with a great view, or at least I did. Lene did not like the Bahamian Buffet menu of not so hot and not the best Manhattan style conch chowder, fried chicken, ribs, three starches, cole slaw and two cakes—one of which had enough rum in it to get a sailor drunk if he or she ate two pieces. All you can eat, for $35. The food was good, but nothing compared to the barbecue cooked by the Harlem Yacht Club’s Chef, Rutillio, that we are longing for.

We were assigned the slip next to “Retired Sailor III” out of British Columbia a custom built “Nordhaven style” 74 foot trawler. Our cats explored the docks, the stone hills behind them and our neighbors’ boats, making friends for us. They were “out” all night, but they know their way back and who feeds them. The current edition of a glossy magazine called Southern Boating was being distributed for free at the Marina. The lead article was a puff piece about the marina, coupled with the 25th annual swimsuit issue, a puff piece on bikinis modeled by women with no puffiness about them, whatsoever.  The article about the marina illustrated the friendliness of the staff by reference to a conversation between the mate of Retired Sailor and the dock hand who took her dock lines to tie up the boat. Mr. Retied Sailor told me that he was telling all his friends that his wife was featured in the swimsuit issue.

Posted from Bimini.