Warderick Wells Cay - Exumas
AJAYA'S CRUISE
Phil & Nikki Hoskins
Wed 28 Apr 2010 17:38
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24:23.71N, 76:38.14W
We had an interesting trip from Little Halls Pond
Cays to Warderick, taking the back route round Bell Island and across the
bank for a few miles. As the tide was rising we reckoned on getting
over any shallow parts on the basis that if we grounded on soft
sand then the tide would give us some more water to float off as it continued to
flood. We didn't touch bottom, although there was one hairy part (excuse
the pun) where the end of a sand bank was close by a rocky ledge that
jutted out and the channel through was extremely narrow. With the
strong current we felt like the nautical equivalent of a supermarket
trolley being blown sideways across a car park.
 
Our track was perilously close to
that rock avoiding the shallow sand bank on the left (lighter colour blue
middle left of picture)
Once through this bottleneck the trip was
uneventful and after spending one night anchored off Emerald Rock we managed to
reserve and take up a buoy (No. 22) in the north mooring field near
the park HQ on Warderick Wells.
  Taken on balcony of the
Exuma Park
HQ
.........Sperm whale posing behind Phil on the
beach
(Nikki is
considering entering 'skip' in next years Crufts -in the pastoral
group!)
This section of the park is stunning, with 22
mooring buoys set in two deep channels with drying sand banks on each side.
There is almost all-round protection from the surrounding cays. Anchoring
is not permitted and the buoys are charged at just $15 per night which gives
visitors the security to go off and explore the island using the various trails
that have been marked out. On a nearby beach we could see the mounted
skeleton of a 52 foot Sperm whale washed ashore some years back, and in the
mooring field were approx 6 Manta rays gliding up and down with their
accompanying Remora fish attached to their underside. They are daily visitors
and their dark shapes beneath the waters are easily spotted.
Our first day was spent walking to Boo Boo Hill,
the highest point on the island, offering stunning views over the park waters.
It's also where cruising visitors leave a memento of their visit, which must be
a piece of driftwood identifying the boat and crew, scratched or burnt
into the wood and which is left somewhere prominent in the large pile of
assorted offerings. In fact, at first glance the site resembles a
bonfire pile awaiting the 5th November. We saw lots of familiar names from boats
we've either cruised with or just heard on the radio. Legend has it that a ship
sank off the island hundreds of years ago with all lives lost, and
their ghosts can be heard singing in the wind on moonlit nights, which
is supposedly how the hill came to have it's name. Modern day mariners leave
their names at the site to placate those spirits.
   Boo Boo Hill - cruisers mementos of
their visit
...................................................
............and our humble contribution
Not wishing to anger any spirits we left our own
mark at Boo Boo hill and walked to Boo Boo beach before taking a circular route
over the backbone of the island and back to the park HQ to sign in and pay our
dues. Being a sunny day there were countless curly tail lizards basking along
the trail. As we sat on a rough bench to eat some mandarins one
actually climbed onto Phil's shoe, looking as though it would climb further than
was desirable. The going was quite tough at times as the trail is composed
of extremely sharp limestone rock, not good to trip over and fall onto! So
we took care to watch our step.
 Boo
Bo Beach........and on top of the
sign..........
......a Curly Tail reception committee - just for
us.
We paid up for two nights and rented the DVD
"Finding Nemo" to watch that evening which was appropriate for our
current sea-going lifestyle. Before settling down to watch Marlin and
Doras' attempts to find Nemo we dinghied ashore to a 'Happy Hour'
gathering on the beach where we met up with some former Gosport based Royal Navy
sailors now living in Canada. When it became darker some members of the resident
mammal population on Warderick, the furry Hutia, put in an
appearance.
Unfortunately, the Hutia, although endangered
within the Bahamas and seemingly cute is in the process of becoming a
thorough nuisance on Warderick, their numbers are swelling. The
current count stands at 5000 and as they are nocturnal creatures is rising
nightly. At approximately 12" long they could be placed in the category of
'large rat going on oversized Guinea Pig'. It has no natural predators on
the island and has a voracious appetite for the local vegetation which it seems
to be destroying with the same efficiency as a swarm of locusts. The
Park authorities are at a loss as to what to do, but if nothing is done soon
these creatures, due to their numbers, will probably start to work a day shift
to avoid tripping over each other in the dark.
   He comes the first Hutia of the
evening
then he gets a little
shy...............
.......before heading off into the bushes again
So, as the sun settled down into the west
the assembled cruisers, drinks and nibbles in hand, became
surrounded by Hutias that emerged from the undergrowth and
gathered under the table looking for scraps that the cruisers may have
dropped. It offered a good photo opportunity as up till then we
had not taken a snap of the stuffed Hutia in a glass cage in the park
office. (That's one less) We had hoped to see some live specimens and now we
were certainly doing that.
The following day was designated as a dive day, and
at low tide we took the dinghy over to the coral garden and explored the scenic
undersea world in all its glory. We hovered over a Nassau Grouper which was
stationary behind a coral growth, looking up at us through its large eyes. The
Parrot fish were there and some beautiful Angel fish - the largest we have seen
so far. Nikki managed to identify the front feeler of a Crawfish which was
firmly entrenched in its hole and not looking to make a move anytime soon. Once
again, the tide had turned and we returned to the dinghy rather than remain
finning hard in the water as though on a nautical treadmill. All in all - a
good couple of days, but the weather was due to become more unsettled over the
Monday/Tuesday period so we decided to stay longer in the security of the park
mooring field.
The following day (Monday 26th) we set off to walk
to some plantation ruins which are about a mile or so from the park HQ. It was
to prove a fruitless exercise and we aborted the expedition when we realised the
dark clouds in the distance that we initially thought were moving to the
north east were in fact heading towards us. As we came to a crossroads
in the rocky trail we turned to head back towards the HQ and Ajaya, knowing that
we could not out-walk the approaching weather system but having no further wish
to keep going towards the ruins. At this point Phil almost trod on a snake
(no picture available) that slithered right out of a hole in the limestone
rocks that form the trail. Nikki heard the loud wail of surprise from a
short distance behind and immediately effected a thorough interrogation of the
startled 'expedition leader' asking about colour (it was brown), size (about 2
foot), girth (couple of inches) and direction of travel (over that way
somewhere) needing confirmation that the skipper had not been in
mortal danger from a man-eating python before showing any inclination to
advance further along the route.
By now the sky was completely overcast and dark
grey as we scuttled along the trail as quickly as possible in the rising wind,
past Boo Boo beach where we were royally sand-blasted on our bare limbs, then up
to Boo Boo Hill (quick check to ensure nobody had removed our Ajaya stick)
finally reaching the park HQ where our dinghy was tied. Just as we managed to
climb down into the dinghy the heavens opened and the wind rose to gale force.
We motored off upwind where the boat was moored battling against a flood tide,
increasingly higher waves and stinging rain that reduced visibility to
just a few yards. We prayed the engine would keep going. If it failed then our
best chance would be to grab hold of one of the moored boats just downwind of
us. We were now completely saturated, wearing just T shirt and shorts. The
dinghy was swimming in water and we must have looked either a very sorry or a
comical sight depending on how you look at these events. We managed to
reach Ajaya where we stripped off and wrung out our clothing before going
below for some drier ones.
The warm front that had suddenly arrived had been
incorrectly predicted, with winds coming from a completely different direction.
This caught out quite a few boats that had left George Town that morning with
the prediction of north west winds, which would have given them a good sail up
Exuma Sound, instead the winds came from the north east, making the Exumas a lee
shore. One boat was reported as hitting a reef and another, a
single-hander, was guided into the same mooring field we were in by park
wardens that went to his aid as his GPS had stopped working and with almost no
visibility he was concerned about finding the right cut through from the sound
onto the banks. He arrived looking extremely tired and was tied onto a buoy just
along from us.
  The sky darkening from the
north
east
the front moving through our area
The storm lasted most of the night, and we were
glad to be tied securely to a strong mooring buoy. The forecast was for the
winds to drop in the morning and remain calm for much of the day before a
secondary front passed through the area Wednesday. We decided to make the most
of the calm and see what Wednesday brought and make a decision then about moving
onwards.
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