Wednesday- ah another beautiful day in paradise. Weather’s been great the entire week; don’t worry another front is on its way.  Winter temps are cooler; very pleasant highs of 79 with nighttime lows around 68 are not hard to take. Cold fronts or “northers” are very predictable. Ahead of the front the wind moderates to less than 5kts, then when the front arrives (we can see the line on the chart plotter) can pick up to 18-25 kts for a solid two days , gusts can be more.

Our morning hike took us about a mile dinghy ride to the mid-south eastern shore. There, we pulled Bunting up to Beryl’s Beach and headed up Beryl’s Trail which leads to the Davis Ruins Trail and crosses over to the rocky eastern shore following along a 3ft high stone wall.

Stone wall crosses the entire cay

The Loyalists ran off in the late 1770s and attempted to establish a plantation of sorts.  The remains of three buildings dating to 1780 consist of rock and conch shell mortar walls. The stone wall which ran across the island from shore to shore was likely constructed to contain livestock; where it came from I can’t imagine. At some point bad blood between the Loyalists and the local pirates either forced their departure or got them killed.

Crumbled wall- conch shell mortar

Mr Bashful Hutia

Our trek along the hutia trail the other day produced not a single sighting of one of these rabbit-sized brown rodents. Today we had better luck as my eagle eyes spied one scurrying into a rocky nook was we approached. Too bashful to come out, he bravely stuck his face out enough for us to see, but the photo doesn’t show him as well as we could see. Hutia have pudgy bodies, stubby necks, short ears and tails and resemble guinea pigs although they are related to the porcupine. Usually when we’d hear the rustling of leaves it meant lizards, but along this trail when the sounds were louder we knew hutia were nearby.

Minutes later we saw a bird we couldn’t identify and a brown racer (snake), our first snake sighting in The Bahamas. Only four species of snakes live in The Bahamas and none are poisonous. The brown racer is the most common and enjoys an easy diet of lizards and insects. None of that worry about when the supply boat is coming.

In the arid climate with mostly limestone rock for soil, plants grow wherever they can.

A tree grows in a natural well

As we stood at the clearing by the ruins I noticed several boats heading in to the Emerald Rock mooring field. One was notable in that it looked like a monohull without a mast or rigging; the graphic near the bow looked familiar. We often joked that some sailing vessels should remove their mast and cut off most of their keel; if they don’t sail,
why have the baggage? A closer look as we dinghied past revealed a puzzler; this was a monohull with no mast and rigging; we knew the boat and last time we saw it (late Oct) it could sail. No one was on board to help satisfy our curiosity. Perhaps a “bad” bridge mishap resulted in chuckin’ it all overboard.

Overlooking Emerald Rock field and the naked boat

Warderick Wells- view from Boo Boo Hill

Warderick Wells, the HQ Cay of ECLSP  is indescribably beautiful, especially the north mooring field which contains 22 of the cay’s 53 moorings. Moorings are priced based on boat size ($20 for us) and assigned on a call in basis for the next or current day. We scored #9, a very short ride to the office and beach, with its own wreck to dive on. Sure, give the newbies the spooky mooring. Some years ago a boat caught on fire while the owners were enjoying dinner on another boat. It sank and the hull is visible in 12’ of water. Russ checked it out after one of our snorkel outings and sure enough, many pretty fishies called it “home”.

Sunken hull at our mooring

We climbed Boo Boo Hill the first afternoon; the cay’s highest spot and THE place to leave a piece of driftwood with your boat name on it. Although the pile looks like a heap of wood, upon closer inspection you see creative calling cards made from driftwood. We’ll add ours next time from driftwood obtained outside the park. “Take only pictures, leave only footprints” is the park’s message. Oh, it has plenty of guidelines and rules too. Again we did this at low tide and to our benefit for once as Jasper Creek is more easily crossed when nearly dry.

Driftwood boat cards at Boo Boo Hill

At headquarters you can get books, a 1 for 1 exchange, rent a DVD for $2, buy T-shirts and trinkets and cough up $10 for 24 hrs of wi-fi that once you are able to log on, works decently. Don’t go too crazy or you’ll use up your allotted megabytes and if that comes before the 24 hours, you are SOL. Tues we hiked the Causeway and Hutia (who-tia) trails. The Causeway trail takes you along the creek (high tide this time), over a small bridge then up and over to the cliffs on the eastern shore. The great majority of bights, harbors and good anchorages exist on the western (Exuma Banks) side of the cays, which is a beneficial in the typical prevailing east winds. The trails are not like what you’d find at home, they are rocky, hole-y and often with huge deep holes (wells). The Bahamas are basically Tertiary limestone, which is limestone that was laid down as windblown deposits approximately 1 to 2 million yrs ago. No other type of rock exists in The Bahamas.

After hitting a couple snorkel spots where we identified Nassau Grouper, Triggerfish and Needlefish, plus many more that were colorful and not in our book, baking was on the agenda. How to best use our 3 remaining eggs? Decided to bake coconut bread- this is a yummy loaf bread, not a yeast one, and bran muffins – which would mean plenty of breakfast food until we could get more eggs. Our friends on Polar Pacer came in to the south field and we hoped to see them before we headed off to Staniel Cay.