Warderick Wells

We've spent the last three days at Warderick Wells, one of the jewels of the Exumas. It is in the heart of the Exuma Land and Sea Park and has many things to keep you busy. For us, the most attractive feature of the area are the hiking trails.

On our first day, we repeated a hike we took during our visit in 2009. We visited the blow holes on Boo-Boo peak, which were quiet as we arrived too close to low tide. We searched for and found the board we left two years ago on Boo-Boo peak, where it is customary for cruisers to leave a piece of driftwood marked with the boat's name and date of visit. Then we continued down to the beach on the Exuma Sound and then back across the Cay to some beaches on the Yellow Banks side of the Cay where we were moored. These beaches are among the best I have seen anywhere. Talcum-fine white sand, turquoise waters and live starfish, conch and other sea life in abundance.

That afternoon, we joined about 20 other cruisers for drinks and snacks down on one of the beaches. Quinn was very happy to find Glen, another 5 year old to play with and they spent 2 hours playing on the beach and in the surf. Unfortunately, Glen's family were headed north to the Abacos on a tight schedule so we couldn't spend more time with them. The afternoon was fun and we met several cruisers who we expect to see more of over the next several weeks as we are all working southward.

Our second day we went for a longer hike to the south end of the cay. We saw ruins of the abandoned loyalist settlement founded during the US Revolutionary War, a hideout used by pirates with a fresh water well, as well as several more beautiful beaches and great vistas. The "trails" were very rugged, often requiring stepping from jagged boulder to boulder, skirting 20-foot deep holes in the limestone. Quinn did very well, but was happy when we were finished with the rough trails and could stick to the beaches the rest of the way back to our dinghy.

Speaking of the dinghy, when we beached the dinghy in preparation for our hike I thought it was low tide. This assumption was supported by the fact that I had to row the last 100 yards in to the beach as it was very shallow and flat. Concerned about a rising tide, I dragged the dinghy up to the high water mark on the beach and tied it to a tree. As it turned out, I needn't have bothered. In fact, it was not low tide when we left the dinghy, but WAS when we returned several hours later. When we crested the rise by the beach where our dinghy was secured I was dismayed to find that the water that I had rowed over had disappeared and our dinghy was stranded 100 yards from any water.

We had three options. One was to swim out to Mirasol to wait for the tide. As Mirasol was about a quarter mile away and we were tired from the hike this was a poor option. The second option was to sit on the beach and wait for the tide to come in. Since this would probably be several hours, it was clear that this wasn't Quinn's or Jen's favorite idea. We were all hot, tired and thirsty.

The third option entailed dragging the 250 pound dinghy, motor, and fuel across 100 yards of that wet talcum-fine white sand. I mentioned that we could sit and wait for the tide, but apparently Jen and Quinn felt that I was simply making a poor joke and waited for me to start hauling the dinghy to the water. Oh, and they took pictures of course.

I did manage to float the dinghy without damaging anything important, (the dinghy made it afloat unscathed as well). We arrived back on Mirasol and I quickly availed myself of our stores of gin, tonic and lime.

Our third day was more leisurely. We hiked back up to the blow holes on Boo-Boo peak. This time we arrived near high tide and they were blowing strongly. We also climbed up to the peak and updated our driftwood marker with the year 2011. Boo-Boo peak get's its name from the sound of the blow holes when there is a strong on-shore swell at high tide. The cay is rumored to be haunted by a shipwreck castaway and some attribute the noise to his ghost, others to the blow holes. I'll reserve judgment as I haven't been to the peak at night and I imagine it's pretty spooky on a full moon.

We hope to come back to Warderick Wells one more time in 2012 as we make our was back to the US. It is a fun place to visit.