Monday November 12th…
We left mid morning for Warderick Wells in
the Exuma Park. We timed our departure
for high tide and high
 |
| Dark Deep, Light Shallow |
sun upon our arrival.
There are no red and green buoys in the Bahamas to mark the
channels. You have to quickly learn to
read the color of the water. When there
is a sand bottom, which is most of the time, shallow water is a very light
bluish green. As the green gets darker,
you are able calibrate the color to depth. What can throw you off is grass or
coral on the bottom which looks like a darker green associated with 12-15
feet. This is where you need to sun
overhead to see the coral heads or grass.
When is doubt, slower than idle speed!.
 |
| Snubber Anchor Setup |
We
took this mooring on Monday afternoon in 25 kt winds. For those of you who have never retrieved a
mooring on a larger boat, you basically pull up to the mooring ball and there
is a pennant that has a float attached.
It's usually a simple job to grab the float with a boat hook and then
put a dock line through the pennant and return the line to the boats
cleat.
This time the length of the pennant was too
short to bring up close enough to put the dock line through. Julianne tried for 15 minutes with no
success. Finally a Captain from the
catamaran next to us came over and gave a hand from his tender. This made short work of getting on the
mooring. A German boat came into the
mooring field the next day and I assisted with our tender as we were helped the
previous day. Great way to make a quick
acquaintance for later on the beach.
At Warderick Wells, the current points the
boat on anchor, not the wind. There are
some great snorkeling and diving spots in this channel, but you have to wait
for slack tide to dive them. 5 pm was
low tide, but Julianne was seeing Nurse sharks all around the boat, so we
decided to start happy hour early that night.
The wind howled all night out of the northeast. It was nice to know we were on a mooring that
had held a boat our size in the last hurricane in 2016.
Tuesday morning we had a senior management
meeting at work. That lasted until 11:30
one hour before
 |
| Warderick Wells Wreck |
high tide. Our goal was
3 snorkeling spots in 2 hours. The first
was literally right next to our mooring.
The hull of a 40 ft vessel lay 10 yards to the east of our mooring. We dove off the back of Top Shelf and
Julianne snorkeled and I free dove the wreck.
I found out where all the nurse sharks were hanging out as well as a
huge sea turtle. On my second dive, I
saw the most awesome site I have ever seen in the water. 4 giant rays swam by in a diamond formation
going up the channel. Their wing span
had to be over 6 ft each. Slow and
graceful, one had to lift their wing to miss our mooring anchor chain. The one time I didn't bring the
camera….figures. After that dive we dove
the
 |
| Angle Fish at Judy's Reef |
Ranger's Garden and Judy's Reef.
Judy's reef was a 20 ft wall at the entrance to the mooring field. Very cool with lots of fish. The snorkel was cut short as the currents
started to increase. Julianne is getting
very comfortable in her snorkel gear.
 |
| Huber on the "Complaint Bench" |
That afternoon we met some German folks who
had arrived that day. Huber asked
if he could hike with us to the hill on Warderick Wells. Seemed like a nice guy, so we invited him to
hike with us.
 |
| Driftwood Carving |
This hill on Warderick Wells where folks
deposit driftwood with their boats name on it.
I found a piece of driftwood on the beach and carried it to the top of
the hill. I took about 20 minutes to
carve "Top Shelf" into that piece of driftwood at the top of the
hill. While I was carving the driftwood,
Julianne was filling the roll of a psychiatrist as the poor German was
complaining about the captain the whole time!
 |
| Over Achiever's Boat Name Artwork |
I finished the carving and went to find a
place to "mount my artwork". I
had to laugh at the over achievers that were there before me. Yes there were pieces of driftwood, but it
looks like folks had taken them home and spent the summer months creating a
piece of artwork. Paint, professional
carving, varnish. Beautiful pieces. Mine looked like the coconut Tom Hanks had
carved in the movie Marooned. I proudly
placed it on a prominent perch and
 |
| Driftwood & The Psychiatrist |
we started to hike down before sunset.
No comments:
Post a Comment