Written 3/11/17
Dawn and Christina thoroughly enjoyed their Thursday morning
paddleboard exploration of Shroud Cay’s middle creek. They detoured into
several small side creeks and were able to see several sharks, rays, turtles,
and other wildlife. While they were gone, Piper and I took the dinghy over to
Fresh Well Bay and hiked up to the namesake well, which has been providing good
sweet water to mariners since the 1700s. Afterward we scrambled around and
bushwhacked a bit getting some panoramic shots of the western mooring field,
then took the dinghy over to the southwestern creek where I rowed in a little
ways (no motorized vessels are permitted except for the northernmost creek to
Driftwood Beach). About that time the girls called on the mobile VHF so we
drifted back out of the creek and started the engine to zip over to pick them
up. Once back on the boat Dawn and I had lunch, then got the boat ready to go
and raised the anchor for our short motor up to Hawksbill Cay. The wind was out
of the east at 10 knots so I rolled out the jib to motorsail – and it promptly
veered southeast, almost south. So much for that.
Hawksbill Cay is where Dawn and I unknowingly flew over Windbird
on March 29th, 2015, during our flying/sailing tour of the Bahamas.
At the time Mark and Judy were northbound from Warderick Wells, on their way
back to the States. So it was cool to go back to the site of our original
rendezvous and recreate Judy’s shot of Windbird from that day – albeit with a
few less boats and a few more clouds in the background. We hiked up to a cairn
to get the shot shortly after we moored, and then were heading up the western
coast to find some ruins when the skies opened up. We hastily retreated to the
boat and decided to go the next morning, which is just what we did, as soon as
Chris Parker’s SSB forecast was over. The Russell Plantation ruins turned out
to be quite extensive but quite, well, ruined…they date to 1785 and what
various hurricanes haven’t destroyed, the vegetation is well on its way to
obliterating. Still a neat spot, and a very nice hike.
It’s only about 10 miles from Hawksbill Cay to Warderick
Wells as the crow flies, but to get to the South Mooring Field we had to go out
to the sound via Alligator Cay Cut and then wind our way back in through the
reef and behind Hog Cay for a total of nearly 18 miles. We had enough wind to
motorsail but not quite enough to sail, and made pretty good time, 3+15
enroute, to arrive shortly after low tide. The entrance is fairly narrow…not
quite as narrow as the north mooring field, but the sides are jagged rocks
rather than submerged sandbars, so it feels a lot narrower! Once inside there
is 360-degree protection, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. A lot of current runs
through, like at all the other cut anchorages around here, but you learn to
plan your day in six-hour chunks around the tides. We were the only boat in the
anchorage yesterday, though two more came in today.
After getting in we took Piper to the beach to do his
business, checked out a palm-lined clearing known as “Pirate's Lair” (not
hyperbole for once – this really was a major pirate hangout back in the day),
hiked across the island to Turtle Beach, then walked back around the island’s
jagged southern perimeter. Once we got back I decided I had to get in the
gorgeous water to cool down, current be damned, and devised a nice way of doing
so. I hung one of our docklines off the back of the boat with a bowline at the
end, stripped down to my birthday suit, jumped off the boat, floated back to
the line, put my foot in the loop, and body-surfed the 3-knot current, cold
beer in hand!
We launched the paddleboard just before sunset, near slack
tide, and I took a nice calm sunset cruise around the anchorage. It was so nice
I got up early to repeat it this morning just before sunrise, and then Dawn
took over for a good hour or so with Piper as a passenger while I listened to
Chris Parker. Once she got back I made Mexican Breakfast, and then dove into my
“to-do” list for the day. Boat maintenance/repair items have been piling up a bit
as I’ve been a little too busy enjoying all the scenic anchorages and their
diversions. I started by remounting our Garmin Gwind receiver for better wifi
reception (our wind instrument has been somewhat intermittent), realigned our
alternator which involved digging through most of the ship’s spares looking for
just the right bolt (it was in the bag labeled “alternator!”), resecured the
boom vang tang for like the third time now (a charm?), tried to troubleshoot
our transmission after the forward gear temporarily failed to engage twice in
the last two days (no culprit found, which worries me), and did some electrical
troubleshooting in the forward V-berth. I didn’t get around to cleaning my SSB
connections…reception has been pretty clear out here, anyways, it’s just that
Chris Parker never seems to hear my transmissions (possible due to five boats
trying to chime in at once?). And the stainless steel remained unpolished.
Maybe tomorrow.
We took a break in the middle of boat work for some slack
tide snorkeling. Dawn found some hotspots during her paddleboarding this
morning, and the one we snorkeled turned out to be absolutely spectacular.
We’ll check out the other one tomorrow morning at high tide before taking off.
Late this afternoon, we packed up the dinghy and took it completely around the
island to the Park headquarters at the north mooring field, where they had
their once-weekly Happy Hour under the tiki hut on Powerful Beach. It was a
full house with all moorings full and a few in attendance from Emerald Rock as
well. We didn’t know anyone beforehand but there were several boats we’d seen
before or heard on the VHF, and everyone was quite friendly. Piper got quite a
few “accidentally” dropped morsels and lots of fond pats on the head. We came
back well after sunset, but the full moon was quite high by then and lit our way
home nicely. Oh, and we had Dawn's waterproofed iPad with our earlier track, too.
The fact that it’s a full moon reminds us that we’ll have
been in the Bahamas for a full month come Monday. By my count about seven days
of that has been spent hiding from weather, two days in Nassau while I flew
back to Atlanta, and another couple days dropping off or picking up guests.
We’ve still seen a ton in the time we’ve had, and we absolutely love it here.
And though we’ve seen a couple of decent blows, the rest of the time the weather
has been pretty accommodating in letting us move up and down the islands pretty
much at will. We’re really glad we were able to come back up to the Exuma Cays
Land & Sea Park, because all of our favorite parts thus far have been here.
My parents are flying into Staniel Cay on Wednesday so we’ll have to head back
down there in a few days, but if the weather forecast cooperates we hope to
come back up here with them for a third time.
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