Shroud Cay
We had a relaxed morning while we waited for high tide and we were away from Highborne Cay around 9:00 AM. Our run was mostly comfortable with 1.5 to 2 foot waves. Our destination was Shroud Cay, which was our first entry into the Land and Sea Park. The Land and Sea Park is a marine reserve which spans 112,640 acres of land and sea.
We set our route for the mooring field in the southwest of Shroud Cay, but diverted to the north anchorage instead for better wind protection. Shortly after we arrived, Brad from Salish Sea texted us to tell us that they had just tied to a mooring ball in the southwest. After lunch and a boat cleaning, Cam had to work so we were late getting away for a dinghy explore of the island. Unfortunately, when we were ready to go it was dead low tide, so we couldn’t even enter the creeks, and we had to navigate around really shallow sandbars, but we did see some turtles and stingrays.
When we got back to the boat, we thought we’d explore anchoring further south and we started noticing brand new mooring balls in North Freshwell Bay that were not on the chart. We went in closer to see the mooring field and check the depths, and suddenly realized that Salish Sea was right in front of us. They had
moved from the southwest mooring field to this new one. We checked the depths at the mooring balls around them and decided to move as well so we found ourselves beside Salish Sea again. The day was so calm and we could see through the water easily so it was easy to move at low tide. After a quick swim, we had cocktails with Brad and Lynda and made plans to explore the creek the next morning, two hours before high tide at 8 AM. During docktails, another couple that was anchored nearby, came by our stern for a visit. It turned out that their home marina was in Killarney, Ontario. Their current boat had never been to Killarney, but we were familiar with their previous boat from all of our years in Killarney. Small world!
We headed out right on time the next morning. We saw lots of turtles and stingrays in the clear rippling waters of the creek as we explored. The mangroves bordered the creek on either side and there were a few offshoot streams that we could explore as well. The tide wasn’t all the way in yet, so the bottom six inches of the mangrove trees were exposed and appeared to have a frosting of salt on the branches and leaves. The main creek led to an opening at Driftwood Beach. We had fun going through the cut a couple of times, but we thought it was too rough to beach the dinghy. Then we saw another couple who beached their dinghy so we decided that we could too. After we beached the dinghies, we tied them to a tree and put out a stern anchor. The little corner of the beach looked crowded with three dinghies but when we came back, there were eight! We walked the
beach and hiked to Camp Driftwood. It was a very short hike, but led to a great lookout over all the creeks we had just explored through the mangroves. We had a great swim before heading back to our dinghies. After we got away from Driftwood Beach, Heather was tidying up the dinghy anchor rode, when we suddenly heard a hissing sound! That is not a good sound in a dinghy with inflatable pontoons,
but soon it became obvious that Cam's life jacket was inflating. The anchor rode must have caught the inflation pull tab. Fortunately, Cam had purchased spare air cartridges before we left. We carried on, heaving a sigh of relief, and followed the creek back out to an inlet just south of our anchorage. What a great exploration!
We had been looking forward to anchoring or
mooring in a place where we could stand on the bottom beside our boat and this was it so we spent the afternoon changing the anodes on our boat, scrubbing the bottom, and checking the depth sounder. It was a lot of hard work under water and we we wore ourselves out! Salish Sea came over for docktails. They planned to leave the next morning for Hawksbill Cay, but we were undecided. As it turned out, they were having power issues the next morning and didn’t end up going anywhere. We went over to tell them our plans and Cam ended up jumping in their engine room to help. A couple of hours later, they stayed put and we dropped our mooring and picked up another in the southwest mooring field of Shroud Cay thinking that it might be better protected from the forecasted winds, but it was pretty rough. We got in our kayaks, and did a hard paddle to shore. The wind and waves still didn’t let up so we paddled hard through the mangroves until we finally found shelter. The trip back was very peaceful as we just coasted and steered while we let the wind and current do all the work. We stopped at the beach for a swim in calm, knee-deep water before heading back to our boat. It was tough getting back on our boat with the current and the waves, but we both managed. The land had a lower profile there so there was not enough protection from the wind. We were sorry that we had chosen to move.
Hawksbill Cay
We left at about 10 AM on a short 4-5 mile run to Hawksbill Cay where we reconnected with Salish Sea. We got the dinghy ready right away so we could do a dinghy explore on the rising tide. On the way, we came across a freshly sunken sailboat. We had read about it on Facebook. It sounded like they were having engine trouble and had radioed for help but they didn't want to backtrack because they were on a schedule. That's never a good idea. Then the conditions turned terrible and they went in to anchor and couldn’t get an anchor hold. Without an engine to help, they dragged into shore and hit bottom, and sunk. This all took place about two weeks before we arrived. We found some things from their boat on shore, including foam mattresses, a 2 x 4, a PFD, a cushion, a tarp, and empty water bottles. We cleaned up what we could and Lynda and Brad took the garbage since they were heading back to Nassau soon. What a shame!
We had a great explore of a creek in Hawksbill Cay. It was so cool, twisting around between the mangroves until we couldn’t go any further. Then we dinghied to the south end of the island, and found beautiful blue waters in all sorts of shades. It was a bit rough in a couple of places as it was exposed to the Atlantic Ocean. We beached the dinghies and had a nice swim before heading back to our boats for lunch. After lunch, we decided to hike to the Russell Ruins. Lynda and Brad led us to the trail head, but it didn’t look right on our map. We carried on and had some amazing views of
the eastern side of the island, as well as a beach, covered in debris. The debris floats in all the time and the park ranger organizes volunteers regularly to clean it up. Finally, we realized that we were on the wrong trail. After looking at a map on Cam‘s phone, we returned to our dinghies and dinghied up to the next beach north. We found a well labelled trail head and found the ruins in about five minutes. The Russell family built their home there in 1785 and abandoned it in 1900. There wasn’t much structure left but we found a stone fence and two definite structures. We sure hiked a lot! We went back to the boats for a swim and a final docktails with Salish Sea before they headed back to Nassau. They kindly offered to take our garbage, which was awesome.
The next afternoon we dinghied to the north end of the island, had a look at Smugglers Cave, and then anchored the boat to go snorkelling. There were two spots where we snorkelled. We saw an ocean sunfish that we kept calling a "sideways swimmer". Then we got chairs, our sun umbrella, and drinks and headed to the beach. What a glorious and relaxing Bahamas day!
Warderick Wells
Our next plan was to go to Warderick Wells, where the Exuma Land and Sea Park Rangers Office is located. You are required to book your mooring ball a day in advance on the radio. We tried to tune in to listen to a report on Sunday at 9 AM on the VHF, but we couldn’t hear the Park Ranger. About 5 minutes later we heard all the boats checking in so we tried to check in, but never heard a response. Next, we tried phoning but no one answered. We had heard Harvest Moon radioing successfully so we asked them to do a relay for us, but we never heard back. We headed out anyway and radioed when we got closer. Miraculously, we had a reservation and we were secured on a mooring ball! Yay! All the balls were filled by the end of the day. When we registered at the office, the woman told us she could hear us every time we hailed her! Something was definitely wrong with our radio since we could broadcast but not hear back unless we were in close range.
Once secured, we wanted to hike to Boo-Boo Hill, but we accidentally did the Causeway Trail instead, which was much longer. We realized that we had missed the sign at the trail head. We went over the causeway bridge, which was some rocks, about a 40 foot wooden bridge, and then more rocks, many of which were submerged, so we got our feet wet. Then we hiked up the Hutia Hill Trail. We saw a snake at the top of the hill and a few lizards along the way. We continued on the Hutia Highway before we decided to turn around to head
back. We took a detour to Barefoot Beach and had a nice swim. We really needed a swim after all that hiking in such heat! We completed our hike at Powerful Beach, and Cam fetched our dinghy from the dinghy dock. There is a 52 foot sperm whale skeleton on the beach there. It died in 1995 following an incident with a plastic bag and the skeleton was reconstructed. It is a reminder for all of us to be responsible with our garbage on the water. We had a swim before heading back to our boat.
On the way back, we stopped to visit Canadians on Koa Kai and they invited us to a great cocktails on shore with lots of boats. Most of the boats were PDQ’s and they had all been travelling together. We saw what we thought was a Bull shark at our boat when we arrived. On the way back to the boat, we saw a Reef shark. Our neighbour said he has swum with them! We weren't sure that we were interested in doing that. Apparently, it is safe to swim with Reef sharks, but not Bull sharks and we had trouble telling the difference.
Tuesday started as a cleaning and fixing day. After lunch, we went to shore and hiked to the blowholes and Boo-Boo Hill. We could hear the blow holes "wooshing" before we saw them. There were two good ones that blew your hair and clothing, plus Cam’s hat off his head, and others where you could barely hear anything. On a rough day, the water will blow up through the hole, not just wind. Boo Boo Hill was full of driftwood with boat names etched or painted on them and we recognized some of our friends' boat names. We enjoyed sitting on the bench there and taking in the view from the highest point on the island. Folklore says that Boo-Boo Hill is haunted by the souls who died when their boats went to ground on the reef below. They say you can hear them sing at night. The tradition is to leave an offering on Boo-Boo Hill, to be blessed with good wind and fair seas, and to appease King Neptune. Unfortunately, we did not find a piece of driftwood on our hike and had not made a sign in advance so we had no offering.
After our hike, we dinghied out to Emerald Bay and snorkelled two coral heads. There are moorings at each of the coral heads for dinghies so you can tie off your dinghy instead of anchoring and potentially damaging the coral. We really enjoyed the second coral head that we went to. It was more colourful and full of life and we even saw a lobster and a lion fish! We spotted some rays on the way back to our boat.
We decided to stay an extra day at Warderick Wells. It was so calm that we went for a long kayak ride, which included a walk on the sandbar at low tide, a walk on the beach, a swim in shallow water, and then we followed nine spotted Eagle Rays! We did not have the camera with us since we were in the kayaks, but Cam may have captured the same rays the day before. In the afternoon we put together a meal in the crockpot, and then went to the beach with our books and our sun umbrella. There were long lawn chairs on the shore for our comfort. Later, we dragged the chairs into the water, and actually sat in the water. It was luxuriously relaxing and refreshing. Just as we decided to go swimming a young family with two little girls came over to swim too, so we had a nice visit with them. It was a perfect afternoon, followed by an easy dinner from the crock pot.
Click on the photos below to view the images in slideshow mode. Coming up next, we go to Cambridge Cay and Sampson Cay.
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