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Warderick Wellls- Jan 9-11

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.

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Shroud Cay Jan 8

Sailing the Exuma Banks is easy, so far at any rate. Courses are marked and depths are often over 12 ft and with a 3ft draft we don’t have much trouble even in the more shallow spots. ENE Winds have behaved, allowing us smooth sailing. You know what that means— save on fuel! With everything costing more here, we have to save somewhere. There’s that catch your own fish thing… once we have the right equipment.  In Nassau we picked up a fish I.D. book, but I wish it included the fish we see snorkeling too.

Shroud Cay is within the confines of the Exumas Cays Land and Sea Park, a 176 square mile area set aside in 1959 for the purposes protecting the natural aspect, features and animal, plant and marine life. Approximately 8 miles wide and 22 miles long the park encompasses many cays and beautiful waters, beaches, snorkeling spots, mangrove creeks, hiking trails and a chance- as if you need one- to chill  out and simply revel in the beauty of mother Exuma nature! Moorings are available in several areas, including Shroud Cay but the winds were light and not due to change direction so we opted to anchor in what turned out to be A+ soft, good holding sand.

Of the 3 or 4 explore-able creeks winding through Shroud Cay, that gets its name from its resemblance to the long narrow sheet used to wrap a body, only the most northern one may be explored via a motorized vessel, aka dinghy with outboard. We had poor timing trying to navigate through at low tide, but a rain shower held us back earlier only to send another our way as we approached the creek entrance. More than once Russ got out to pull us through 6” of water. The creek led to a beach on the eastern (Exuma Sound) shore and Camp Driftwood.  The story is this: in the 1960’s a man named Ernest Scholtes began building Camp Driftwood. He was a bit of hermit, living on his sailboat just inside the creek near the Sound. He cut steps into the 50’ hill and carried sand in sail bags to build the trail up. He used driftwood to build tables and benches adding shells and other beach treasures to the “camp”. Others began leaving behind shells and other flotsam and at one time there was a jar with paper and pencils in it for people to leave notes behind.

Exuma Sound view from Camp Driftwood

Path to Camp Driftwood

Unfortunately, we were all set to bring our token except the story went on to say that thoughtless individuals left behind bags of garbage and ruined the magic. The park requests that nothing be left at the camp and they will remove anything that is- party poopers.