Charter Boats Everywhere! – Wardrick Wells Exuma’s, Bahamas – December 12, 2022

We headed out early and made it across the Exuma Sound without issue. It was expected to be heavy rolling waves but wasn’t bad at all. We headed straight across, through the Wardrick Wells Cut, and picked up a mooring at the park. It felt nice to be back to one of the MOST beautiful places on earth.

We had spent nearly three weeks here last year. We did our good deed and while hiking did a trash clean up at one of the beaches. When we dropped the trash off to the warden, there was a Mega-yacht checking in who was nearly 230 feet long and they were nickel and diming the warden. I don’t get it. If you have that kind of money to either own or charter a boat like that, why not pay the park what they are owed instead of trying to negotiate them down. I mean we are talking $70 max. We waited nearly ½ an hour At least we saw our plaque at the top of Boo Boo Hill from last year and felt the need to sign it again.

Well, no good deed goes unpunished since I realized that when we got back, my glasses had fallen out of my backpack at some point while we were out on the poisonwood trails and we nearly got hit by two charter boats coming in. I am not sure if it is this time of the year being near Christmas or simply because we were not in the Exumas much last year and this is where majority of the charter boats are. I really don’t remember seeing this many charter’s last year and it is scary since they don’t know how to anchor, cannot pick up a mooring very well, and tend to leave their generators on non-stop to support their need for air conditioning. It’s scary and we always seem to end up right next to one and they are all 50+ feet.

We decided to head north to Hawsbill Cay for the night as it was a place we had not visited before and the water was incredible!

But low and behold, the other Exuma phenomina…mega yachts (also charters). One pulled in and picked up the mooring RIGHT in front of us blocking our view of the beach. Then launched his tender and proceeded to preform figure eights around our boat. Gee thanks. This one was only a 70-footer which cost only $25K a week vs the super mega charters (230-footer) which cost a million a week. I know the Exuma’s is the land of the mega-yachts but there seem to be more this year. People just have too much money. Anyway, we moved to the other side of the mooring field and enjoyed our night a bit farther away from our new neighbors.

We got up the next morning to move a bit farther north to Shroud Cay and see the turtles. You can dinghy though the center of the island and we saw about 50 turtles, 2 rays, a shark, and a handful of fish.  The watercolor was amazing, and it was essentially a mangrove nursery which you could only explore on a rising tide.  We even saw Camp Driftwood which is a campground for cruisers.  It was stunning and now we headed south and spent the night at Cambridge Cay.

Planning Plan B – December 8, 2022, Ten Bay, Eleuthera, Bahamas

Sailing Hubby and I spent last night at Governor’s Harbor.  It is not a great anchorage, and I don’t think Ron slept much at all in fear we would drag.  The anchorage was loud with ripping motorcycles, but they did have diesel we needed so we jerry jugged that back to the boat and filled her up along with some fresh bread and eggs.  We also found the hot sauce we had been searching out that we had a chance to try in Spanish Wells.  Excellent “Picante”!

We hiked part of the island and searched out an old US Navy base. It was used in the 50’s to listen for Russian Submarines but then decommissioned in the 80’s. We also got to see the beach on the other side of Eleuthera which was beautiful even if it was deserted. The base was fully operational and played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We saw the water source for the base, barracks, guard shack upon the entrance to the base, and one of the administrative buildings. It was pretty cool to literally step back in time.

Ron then hunted for his dinner snorkeling once we got down to Ten Bay which was a beautiful beach. He had fresh red snapper for dinner. Being vegetarian, I, of course, stuck to my tofu & veggies but we started to plan the next leg of the trip which includes crossing the Exuma Sound. While this doesn’t look very far and is only a day trip, there are a lot of moving parts to consider like the wind speed and direction, sea state, tides once we get to the cuts (which will dictate our actual path), and there is a tropical low spinning above east of us right now. While not getting to technical you can get all the travel parameters right only arrive at the cut(entrance to the anchorage) early or late and find rolling breaking waves. This make for a very tense time for the last few moments of the trip. Needless to say it is good to have plan A plan B and plan C just in case.

Based on what’s going on the tropical low is causing an agitated sea state but the waves will likely be low enough for us to go over on Friday from Rock Sound, so we are moving south today to stage for the jump to the Exuma’s. There is a bigger storm coming Thursday and we need to be inside the land and sea park, as it is the most protected place, without backtracking to Spanish Wells. There is a lot of hiking and snorkeling there and plenty to keep us entertained while we wait out the weather. We spent 2 weeks there last year and it’s beautiful. We didn’t go to Rock Sound last year, so I am interested to see what’s here. If nothing else, we will get rid of our trash before we hit Staniel Cay, where it is $6 a bag to do so. At that price, it makes us very thoughtful of our trash.

Jumping to Eleuthera – December 5, 2022, “The Glass Window”, Bahamas

We decided to move along to the island of Eleuthera and caught a weather window to cross the Northeast Providence Channel. We had a couple of nice days and spent the first night anchored in Royal Island and then moved over to “Meeks Patch.” We did a snorkel there which was incredible. I saw two puffer fish, three lionfish, a starfish which was about the size of a pizza, and tons of coral. By far one of the best snorkel’s we have done.

At that point we needed to stay in the marina for a few days with an upcoming storm coming through.  We decided to stay in Spanish Wells for the next three days which worked out great.  We could do laundry, get off the boat and walk around, and Ron was able to mount our starlink (which is working fabulously by the way).

Spanish Wells is an interesting place since it is the HQ of Red Lobster and based on all this business, it is a vibrant little town.  Plenty of restaurants, the best grocery store we came across last year, and the folks at the marina are awesome.  It was an easy couple of days and we even got to enjoy a draft beer which is not normal here!

Once the weather broke, we decided to go through current cut and anchor near “The Glass Window.” There we had a chance to beach the dinghy and see not only “The Queen’s Bath,” but also the death highway which we had to walk down to get to the glass window bridge. There was no berm, no sidewalk, or any place to walk along next to the road where cars were flying by us at 60MPH. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it.

The Glass window was kinda cool as there was a gigantic cave, blow holes, and the bridge itself was pretty cool.