Everyone encouraged us to stay overnight at the mooring balls in the Warderick Wells Cay, Exuamas Land and Sea Park. We tried, but didn't know that to get a mooring ball you had to call in advance. They were all filled up by the time we called in, but we did pick up a mooring south of the most desired location. This was also quite beautiful, but added almost an extra 45 minutes to 1 hour of sailing time to get around the large sandbank that extends far out into the Bahama Bank.
We enjoyed some snorkeling by our mooring area, but the hiking on Warderick Wells Cay was the highlight of the time in that space. We also flew our drone and Jeff captured some incredible footage. The hiking on the island was extensive, well marked and easy to follow. Don't miss Boo Boo Hill and make sure you write your boat name on a piece of driftwood and add it to the artistic collection at the top of Boo Boo Hill. It's fabulous to recognize so many boat names and cruisers.
Surprisingly, we were able to get on a mooring ball in the desired area the next day, but we decided to move on instead. It was a long motor back to the park entrance, and we opted to see another island north in the chain. Warderick Wells is super popular and therefore, you have more boats in this anchorage than in other places. We prefer to be in more remote islands and anchorages.
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Time to go!
And away we go, leaving Cambridge Quay to wardrobe, going outside into the ocean side
today.
Should be a little rough.
We are back out in the wild dark blue, and we had to strap down some things that were
flying all over the place.
So we are jib sailing.
How fast are we going?
We're burning it up at five knots.
No way.
Yeah.
And the wind speed is?
We don't have a very long sail, so I don't think we're going to put the main up.
Okay, making another attempt to do some fishing.
Hopefully today we'll catch something.
Yeah.
Jeff's at the helm, keeping us on track.
Righty.
So this is kind of a preventer.
Kind of a pull out action, so we can get a little bit more width on the sail running
down.
Stabilize it a bit.
Yeah.
One of Jeff's special techniques he's teaching us.
Yeah.
Oh man, she's holding form.
We are just about to enter the cut at Wardrick Wells, and there are no open mooring balls
in the northernmost mooring field, the place where every cruiser wants to be.
You have to call the park office early in the morning to inquire about openings.
We learned our lesson the hard way, and we'll have to take a mooring at a secondary location
called Emerald Rock.
And to get there, it will take us an extra hour of motoring, because we need to go around
a large sand shoal.
We are making our way around this huge sandbar here to head up to our mooring tonight, and
we should be there in about a half an hour.
The seas are a bit rough.
The wind is strong, about almost 30 knots, and looking forward to getting on the mooring
ball.
We are in Wardrick Keys, and we are headed to the ranger's station to pay our mooring
ball fee, which is $1.35, and there is the ranger's station ahead of us.
How cool is this?
This is the park office.
We've just checked in for one night on the mooring ball, and going to check out the whale
carcass that is on the beach.
Wow, a carcass of a sperm whale, killed by plastic garbage.
That's horrible.
Oh, is that what they said?
Yeah.
We're going to try and do a little snorkel drift of Emerald Rock.
We thought there were going to be mooring balls to connect to, but there aren't, so
we're going to drift it and see how it goes.
I think we're going to get blown off here.
It's a beautiful morning here in Wardrick Wells, and like every day, the adventure continues.
We are on our way to Boo Boo Hill.
Should be an interesting path to get up there.
Bit rugged.
Oh, wow.
We've got quite the ridge to walk on here, with some spectacular views.
Take a look at that.
Pretty amazing.
Well, we got off on the wrong trail.
We started on the Causeway Trail, and we ended up going the opposite direction.
And we want to be way over there, but we are here, so we're going to make our way down
to this Hootia Highway Beach, and then we're going to walk over to Boo Boo Hill.
Whoa!
So many choices.
So we found a workaround to our taking the wrong trail to Boo Boo Hill.
That is Boo Boo Hill, and we're going to be there in a few minutes.
In order to be prepared for Boo Boo Hill, we brought bandages, O-negative blood, and
a bandage, that's it.
First aid, cream, the whole bit.
Don't leave the boat without it when going to Boo Boo Hill, okay?
You heard about it first, here on the Blown Away channel.
Thanks for watching.
Oh, it's so cute!
Everyone put their boat name on it.
We should have a pen, if we had known.
That is so cool.
Good boy!
Welcome to the headquarters of Exuma Keyes Land and Sea Park, where turquoise waters
meet sandy white beaches, and everywhere you look is a photo-worthy scene.
The northernmost mooring field, seen here, is a natural river of turquoise water surrounded
by sand, and is spectacular.
At low tide, it even allows a cruiser to step off the back of their boat onto a sandy shoal.
The 176 square mile Land and Sea Park was created in 1958, and is the first land and
sea park to be created in the world.
This stretch of pristine water, land, and beaches is an ecological preserve and wildlife
refuge, famous for its breathtaking marine environment.
It is such a privilege to sail in these waters.
It was a very short but enjoyable visit to Wardrick Wells Key.
Though the park informed us we had secured a mooring ball in the north field for our
second night, we still decided to move on to Turtle Key, because we knew we had to continue
north in our quest to cross the 36th parallel by June 15th.
