Tradewinds (?)

This has been the longest period of calm weather we’ve experienced since we arrived in the Bahamas. At times, it’s even beyond calm – dead still almost. Like smooth, glassy, wakeboarding water. On the open ocean. Pretty cool, but not good for sailing. We really haven’t had much wind since we arrived at Black Point, and the weather forecast doesn’t have the wind filling back in until Sunday. At which point, we will make the final leg back to the Abacos to enjoy a week with my parents. But while we are becalmed here, we are definitely making the most of it.

The guide book describes the water here as “gin clear” but that doesn’t really paint the full picture. Combined with the stillness of the water, the effect is amazing. As Brad described it – while running at full throttle in the dinghy in 10 feet of water you can wave at your shadow on the ocean floor, and literally count how many fingers you’re holding up!

The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park is a no-take preserve.  It covers 176 square miles and was the first park of its kind when it was set aside in 1958. So we had the bright idea to anchor outside of the park so we could still spearfish! Apparently a lot of other people have had that same thought because our total fishing result was just two lionfish over two days. And while the calm, clear waters allowed us to cover a lot of ground by dinghy looking for conch, we didn’t find any outside the park, so no conch salad.

On Monday, we entered the park and explored the south end by dinghy from our anchorage near Compass Cay. Rocky Dundas has two caves on the small cay. We went at high tide and snorkeled into the interior to witness amazing stalactite and stalagmite formations lit by overhead openings to the clear blue sky. There was only one other dinghy there, so we got to explore each cave on our own, making it a little more awe-inspiring that the fin and snorkel crowded Thunderball Grotto.

Next stop was the “Sea Aquarium,” which is a mini wall that’s home to a ton of fish. We saw a lobster just meandering across the sandy bottom, feeling confident inside the park boundaries and outside of lobster season. The tide was running, however, and a strong current prevented us from lingering. We stopped at the host boat at the Cambridge Cay mooring field, and the volunteer couple aboard kindly recommended some additional areas for us to check out.  We then headed back to Joint Venture for lunch and to wait for slack tide to explore the other areas.

After lunch we went to some coral gardens near a cut and an old airplane wreck with some fantastic, high coral heads nearby. Feeling a little waterlogged by this point, we decided to take a trail before heading home. We hiked across Cambridge Cay to a beach and up to the peak for a spectacular view of the Exumas and the calm seas.

On our way home, we were running the dinghy at full speed, marveling at the great view we had of the bottom when I spun around to look at Brad. He had the same wide eyes as me when he asked:

“Was that a gigantic turtle with two remoras on its back?”

He hung an immediate U-turn as I grabbed my mask and snorkel. The tide was ripping again by this point, so Brad stayed with the dinghy while I dove down to get a closer look. He was a green turtle in about 20 feet of water and was at least 200 pounds. He didn’t seem too bothered by my presence, and I snapped some photos while the four of us were swiftly swept along together.

After our day of activity, we enjoyed a quiet evening of wine and pizza in the cockpit with an amazing full moon. We did get one moment of excitement when a local came across VHF 16 several times “PLP, PLP!! We won, we won – we have a new government!” The Bahamas national elections were held on May 7, and while we’re not sure of the official results, I’m sure we’ll hear much more about them when we reach the Abacos.

Tuesday morning, we started out for the moorings at Park Headquarters, Warderick Wells. We actually had a slight breeze, so we sailed off the anchorage and made just over 4 knots heading directly downwind. We’d gotten an early start, and only had about 10nm to go, so we were fairly determined to sail and conserve diesel for our trip north. The wind diminished pretty rapidly though, and several hours later we were not sailing so much as drifting, so we fired up the engine and dropped our ETA from about 3 hours to only 20 minutes.

We found our mooring assignment, headed in to the headquarters to check in, and immediately proceeded out to the dinghy snorkel moorings. We explored quite a few snorkeling sites before returning back to Joint Venture late afternoon.

The mooring field at Warderick Wells is fish hook-shaped, with a single row of 22 moorings looping around the outer edge of the bay. At low tide, the area in the middle of the moorings is a nearly dry sand bank. Since we were lacking a net and the rest of our volleyball team, we decided to swim to the sand bank and throw the Frisbee around for a while. It also made for some great photo ops with Joint Venture in the background.

We were able to pick up internet here at the park headquarters, but unfortunately, the sat phone is still out of commission. We did receive a helpful response to our email to the customer service department requesting that we call them at our convenience in order to discuss our inability to place calls. Needless to say, this did nothing to encourage us that we’ll be back in service any time soon. But there’s plenty to do, and we’ll post it all when we’re able to get a connection again.

[We don’t have a lot of bandwidth here so we had to shrink the photos down to make them easier to upload. Post a comment if you would like to see one of the photos posted full size when we get to the Abacos.]