Cruising the Exumas Land & Sea Park

Winterlude spent some time this spring enjoying all that the Exumas Land & Sea Park has to offer cruisers while hiding from some nasty northers all at the same time.  Several posts, along with lots of photos, specifically on this part of our spring cruise are over at commuterCRUISER.com.   Here are some of the posts if you want to link directly to the fun part of the cruise and skip all the commuter cruising parts! 

Hang on Noah!  Hold the Ark!  The story of what a great hidey hole the North Anchorage at Warderick Wells turned out to be for the weather!

Legend of Boo Boo Hill  - more detail behind the photo posted on the Almost Daily Photo Page about upholding the traditions of those that have gone before us.

Haunted Warderick Wells

Warderick Wells Photo Essay (including our hike circumnavigating the island)

Mockingbird Invasion

From the mockingbird surprise, to hiking around the island, to the 1700's Loyalist ruins, to the watercolors, to the snorkeling, everything about Warderick Wells rates  a 10+ in our cruising experience! 

Cheers!  Jan & David
sv Winterlude

Perfect Sailing Day!

While cruising, it seems the wind is never quite right to enjoy a great sail.  It's either too little, too much, right on the nose or directly on the stern ... none of which make for a fun sail.  We were incredibly lucky on our final sail back to Marathon - closing the loop we made outbound to the Exumas/Bahamas. 

Check out my Commuter Cruiser post update "Cruising Day to Dream About" with some details and photos!  Enjoy!  Cheers!  Jan & David

Quick Update: Warderick Wells Hiding From Weather!

Hi all! Winterlude is safely on mooring ball 14 at Warderick Wells North Mooring Field, headquarters for the Exuma Land & Sea Park. Starting tonight, the weather forecast is calling for 25 kts gusting to 30 and 40-50 knots of wind in squalls. Most of the Exumas are north south oriented islands, with great protection from the northeast through southeast – the prevailing winds, but absolutely no protection from the south, north or west. Guess which directions the forecast winds are from! J In looking at our options to hole up somewhere, the best location seemed to be Warderick Wells.

The downside is that there are only 22 mooring balls available at Warderick Wells in the north mooring field and you have to be on a waiting list to claim one. So being the ever prudent (i.e. scaredy-cat) cruisers that we are … we looked at all the snorkeling and hiking opportunities as well as the beauty of this island and decided it wouldn’t be terribly awful to spend a week or so playing and enjoying the watercolors, the snorkeling and 4 miles of hiking trails along unbelievably beautiful bluffs overlooking Exuma Sound … not to mention the Loyalist ruins from the late 1700’s … the whale skeleton, BooBoo Hill (the island is reportedly haunted and we believe it, but that’s a subject for another post).

We’re constantly amazed that this nasty weather has been forecast from several sources for days and days, but last night at sunset two boats tried to come into the mooring field without reservations to escape. The park wardens ran them out – one boat even had two fishing lines in the water and the national park is a strict no fishing zone – I just don’t understand people. We probably error on the side of being too cautious, but we do have a nice secure place to weather the upcoming 40-50 knot squalls that are forecast to pound the Bahamas later this afternoon … they may even interfere with the cruisers get together at the tiki hut on the beach in front of us, altho’ cruisers are very resilient so I’ll bake my pineapple angel food cake just in case!

More posts and updates after we get back to internet access – lots of fun stories to tell!

Stay tuned! Cheers! Jan & David, sv Winterlude, North Mooring Field, Warderick Wells … 24 23.686N 76 37.952W

Photo Updates on CommuterCruiser.com

Still "stuck" at Highbourne Cay, Exumas ... being held hostage by weather -- strong winds, but beautiful sunny days. Check out the photo blogs on what we've been doing over at Commuter Cruiser. Click Here!

Lucky Friday the 13th! We're in the Exumas!

:) We finally made it to the Exumas! Motorsailed the final 38 miles yesterday (Thursday) from the west end of New Providence (Nassau is on the eastern end) -- great day! Anchored off Highbourne Cay and enjoyed a nice sunset. Plus the nurse shark that swam by just as I was snorkeling to make sure the anchor was well set --after all, it's supposed to BLOW over the weekend! What about that huge ray that jumped and the sea turtle that swam under the boat right about sunset welcoming us the the Exumas ... does it get better?

I couldn't finish the copyediting I needed to do on The Boat Galley Cookbook because the internet went down at the Albany Marina Wednesday evening.... it doesn't seem to matter how luxurious the marina, the internet is a sometimes thing once you're outside the U.S.! I had 3 more chapters to copyedit & no way to finish.

Turns out the weather has decided to blow 30 for the next 3 days and we lucked out getting a slip at the Highbourne Cay Marina -- we're the only sailboat with all the mega-yachts and mega-trawlers! But we have internet to finish the book editing AND I don't have to sit outside in the surge that's rounding the island with good sized swells. Anytime you anchor off a smaller island - Highbourne is 2 1/2 miles long and supposedly has one of the best beaches in the Exumas. We took the provided marina bikes today and checked out the beach -- one of the nicest, great crescent, breaking waves and gorgeous water colors! Now we just need calmer waters to snorkel the two highly rated snorkeling spots (in the lee of the island) here! Saw a couple really big yellowtail snappers today, maybe I'll have to go dinghy fishing - you don't catch yellowtail with a spear....

More when I have internet!

Cheers! Jan & David

1st Day In Paradise

Don't forget, you can see this and more posts over on my new site, commutercruiser.com!

We wake up this morning after a great sail all day yesterday from the Keys to Bimini, enjoy our coffee looking over the most azure waters we've seen in two years! I cannot WAIT to get in and visit the colorful fishies ... unfortunately that will have to wait. Instead, I remembered that when we pulled into the slip yesterday the depth sounder was going crazy -- flashing clearly false readings over 100 feet deep! WOW! If this 7 foot or less water was 100 feet deep, we wouldn't NEED a depth sounder ... of course, anchoring might be a challenge....

Whacko Autohelm Tri-Data Depth Sounder - showing 97 ft when we're in 7 ft?

We had high hopes of staying here a day and then catching a 2 day weather window across the Bahamas Banks -- 8 - 15 feet of shallow gin clear water where reportedly we'll see the starfish on the bottom, but also dodge coral heads. Supposedly it requires sailing during daylight and in light winds to keep down the chop and to allow us to anchor in the middle of nowhere on the Banks -- nowhere to go, just drop the hook in the middle of the biggest swimming pool in the world! 80 miles across.

In the meantime, the depthsounder is a critical piece of this crossing. I turn on the instruments. Crap, it's still registering over 100 feet and flashing -- not a good sign. Not sure with a 5 1/2 foot draft we can cruise the Bahamas without a depth sounder. First we check for connections -- spending the morning taking every connection for the transducer to the display apart, cleaning and reassembling. Still no joy. We decline our new friend Bill's offer to go snorkeling with him during the late morning and scratch our heads.

What Happened Here???

As luck would have it, when we bought our new Garmin GPS, it came with a depth sounder. After not being able to make the 14 year old depth sounder, an Autohelm Tri-Data, function, we pull out the depth sounder that came with the Garmin and see if we can make it work. All the instructions are to mount it outside the hull -- well, that's not going to work unless we pull the boat out of the water and that's not in the cards ... at least here. SO, we try suggestions from other cruisers ... we tried silicone to attach it inside the hull, no reading. But if it's in WATER inside the hull, it gives an accurate readout. Then Gene from Yorkshire Rose suggested that we needed to silicone a water containment something - he suggested a 2" piece of PVC pipe to the interior of the hull to contain the water and let the Garmin depth transducer sit in it, keeping the water in contact with the hull (and bottom) whether we're heeling or not. idea, except we don't have any PVC pipe. But we DO have an old rubbermaid type container I used to keep butter in when we were eating butter ... David cut the bottom out with the Dremel and tried gluing it to the interior hull.

Typical of Working on Anything .. Access Requires Contortionism

Then we left to hike over to the beach and see the wreck and also all the homes destroyed by an unknown hurricane and never rebuilt. Had to let the glue dry, you know! Great little hike - I always wonder - what happened to this ship, why did it crash on the rocks just outside the channel - did it lose an engine? How many people were on board - were they scared? Was it a storm? Did they swim ashore on this crazy rocky beach with crashing waves? Were they hurt? Unfortunately the internet here isn't good enough for me to do some investigation and see what I can find.

So after wandering down the other way, we decided to return to the boat and see if the containment system we jerry-rigged would hold water. No. :( So we tried Amazing Goop Marine - cleaned it all up and redid the containment installation ... then went to the pool - important to stay cooled off! We used the hair dryer to help speed set the goop, according to the instructions and several hours later ... after dinner and cocktails, we were ready to test it again.

What a Great Pool! A great way to forget the depth sounder for a bit while the Amazing Marine Goop dries.

Keep in mind, if it didn't work this time, our weather window to cross the banks starting tomorrow morning will be shot ... water goes in, water stays in - at least for now. David puts the transducer in the container with the water -- facilitating the connection to the hull and water below. We both say an extra prayer as he connects the wire to the GPS and VOILA!!!! It's 5 foot 2 inches! WOOHOO!!!! We're back in business -- as long as we can keep water in the jerry-rigged containment system (i.e. butter rubbermaid container with the bottom cut out)!

So if there are no posts for awhile, it's because there's NO INTERNET! Exumas, here we come! I can't wait to see swimming pigs and dinosaur skeletons and swim in Thunderball Hole -- or whatever they call it where they filmed the James Bond movie! Plus hopefully be eating fresh fish for dinner several nights a week again!

Cheers! Jan & David, Blue Water Marina, Bimini

The Garmin Depth Sounder WORKS! (Bottom Left Hand Corner)

David Eyeballing the Tricky Channel We Navigated into Bimini. Ever-shifting sandbars make it impossible to mark a channel, so it's eyeball navigation once past the outside markers

No April Fool! We're In The Bahamas!!!! :) :) :)

Hi all! We crossed yesterday, Saturday, March 31, 2012 from Rodriguez Key, close to Key Largo. Winds were forecast to be perfect, southeast 8-11 knots and 2 foot seas. We departed with two other boats that just happened to be headed the same way at 3 AM -- pitch black, I might add! Ducked through the reef in a "hole" the guys plotted out on the new Garmin GPS with our fingers crossed that the GPS low spots were in the same spots as indicated on the GPS ... it was rough with the wind -- 16-18, NOT 8-11 as forecast, blowing onto the shallow reef -- 7 feet in spots. Shallow water equals bigger steeper waves, like Carlyle Lake in a chop for our Y Flyer friends. Immediately after crossing the reef, the ocean bottom drops to off soundings -- gazillions of feet deep, making the waves while not necessarily smaller, further apart - i.e. much more comfortable ride. And for once, the wind was NOT on the nose - it was abeam on a nice reach. Because it was strong, once we got into the gulf stream, which wasn't long, we were doing anywhere between 7.5 and 9 knots over the bottom -- WOOHOO, Winterlude was FLYING! The last time we saw numbers like that on this boat was when we sailed from Belize to Isla Mujeres - again, riding the gulf stream north, instead of trying to cross it.

Because we picked Rodriguez Key to leave from, we were further south, a longer route, but taking advantage of the gulf stream current. For once, we were smart! :) Or lucky ... or both!

Dawn finally arrived after 4 hours of sailing literally in the dark and the rest of the day was one you dream about when you think about going cruising. Dolphins playing and the water getting clearer and clearer and bluer and bluer as we closed on Bimini. We decided to cross to Bimini only because that's where the other two boats were going and we'd never been here before.

Arrived at Bimini about 3 PM - just in time for high tide, which was a very good thing because we saw some very shallow water coming in. Our Belize reading the water experience paid off - all the other boats bumped coming in, but David kept us a bit more right in the bend in the channel and in a narrow ribbon of deeper blue water. We decided to to to the Blue Water Marina - $1 a foot a day - again because that's where the other boat's were headed and supposedly customs & immigration was next door. Which it was - the minute the boat hit the dock (not literally), David, the marina guy helped us tie up and hustled David off to customs - only the captain gets to leave the boat until it's all cleared in.

We're here and now looking for a window -- 2-3 days -- to cross the Bahama Banks, a shallow - 10 - 15 feet sea of clear water stretching about 80 miles or more from here to the Exumas. We'll anchor on the banks one night because we can't make 80 miles in one day. That should be fun - hopefully we'll find a likely looking spot for some snorkeling at the same time. And drag a fishing line, even though we were obviously just entertaining the fish (to borrow a line from the Trawler DriftAway blog - thx Dave!). Today there are isolated squalls forecast and a band of clouds in the sky, so we'll just wander around the little town of Alicetown and see about eating some Bahamian food and stocking the boat with the famous Bahamian beer, Kalik!

Until I find another internet connection, sea ya! :) Cheers! J&D