Warderick Wells, the headquarters of the Exumas Land and Sea park

South mooring field

Bullion Beach overlooking Exuma Sound

Following a trail across the island

As the name implies, the park covers both land and sea areas and is one of 25 national parks and protected areas in The Bahamas. It is administered by a unique non-governmental, non-profit, self funded organisation and relies heavily on voluntary support.

There is always a waiting list for boats to take up moorings in the park. A vessel can only be placed on the waiting list 24 hours in advance on a first come first served basis.

When we arrived at the park on 3^rd March, we were allocated a mooring in the southern harbour, a very picturesque area but a long 20 minute dinghy ride to park HQ on the north end of the island. Chill was already moored in the park in the northern harbour close to park HQ. On 4^th March, Geoff’s birthday, we had a major weather front come through and spent a very rolly day with strong currents and winds conflicting, so that we had the wind on our beam rather than the bow for most of the day. Quite uncomfortable!

We sat this out for 4^th March, then on 5^th, a much calmer day, we dinghied up to park HQ to volunteer our services to help maintain the park. Geoff worked on some re-wiring of the park HQ building, grovelling under the building in the morning and in the rafters in the afternoon, while Iza worked on a computer inventory.

After we finished work that day, we rushed back to the southern harbour to bring Dream On up to a reserved mooring in the North Harbour and to make it back to HQ in time for the weekly Happy Hour. Really bad timing as this resulted in us manoeuvring Dream On through the very narrow channel between moored boats and sand banks then negotiating a 90 degree turn before rocks in a very strong current and successfully capturing the mooring buoy all under the watchful eye of around 30 Happy Hour incumbents, (all sailors), on the veranda of the HQ building. Fortunately we did not screw it up and with the dinghy engine still warm and the beer cold, made it to Happy Hour in record time. Nikita and Christina Joy arrived the same day.

Geoff has been working on the boat, while Iza has continued to volunteer on a daily basis at the park. She has tended the Park Warden’s vegetable garden, helped build a path, compiled visiting boat statistics and re-organised stock in the shop.

We made our first dive in 8 months here, mostly to check out new diving equipment. The water is still only 24ºC, 3º colder than the coldest Jeddah winter water. The water under the boat was only 4 metres so a very shallow test dive. Our first visitor was an enormous Nassau Grouper that sat on the bottom with us eye to eye and was obviously fascinated by our bubbles. From the boat we regularly see a family of three Eagle Rays and have seen Lemon Sharks from the dinghy. Unfortunately none of these were around for our first dive.

We have done a lot of walking here, exploring the many rough trails laid out around the island meandering from the calmer western shoreline with great beaches to the more rugged eastern shore which is Exuma Sound, still part of the North Atlantic.

We’ve met some great people here, most of whom we will no doubt see again as we continue our trip. Our special thanks to Fred & Joyce on Dragonfly. Fred came up with the solution to our HF radio email gremlins. There were regular get togethers on the beach at sundown when information and advice on other places to visit was always available from other cruisers.

It is customary for visiting boats to leave a momento bearing their individual and boat names on a plaque at the top of the islands highest point, Boo Boo Hill. We have collected a suitable piece of driftwood so that we can do this before we leave here. Weather permitting, we plan to leave on 11^th March.