The wind continues to blow around 25 knots and we continue to stay on “our” mooring at Exuma Land and Sea Park.
We were going a little stir crazy on Sunday, so went snorkeling around Emerald Rock. Only had a few waves surprise me by flooding the snorkel. Got a couple of good pictures of Nassau Groupers living without fear in the park. Beth elected to stay in the dinghy and watch through the floor. She ended up getting wetter and colder than I did because of the splash from the wind and waves.
Did end up taking the crew of Sun21 to shore today. They are a very interesting trio of guys working to spread the message of solar energy. The boat has two electric motors either of which would easily fit into our engine compartment. They fired them up so we could hear them and they were virtually silent. Just need to find room for the 1.5 tons of batteries and lots more solar panels. They are documenting the voyage and shared some of the photos and video. It was fun to chat with another Mac computer user using Final Cut Pro and iPhoto. His narration reminds me of old Jacques Cousteau films. They also have a musical bent and carry violins aboard. I can picture these three Swiss gentlemen sitting on the deck on a calm day in the mid-atlantic sipping wine and playing a violin trio.
While I was visiting with the crew of Sun21, Beth and Noah had visitors as well. Intuition was surrounded by small minnows which brought lots of larger fish in a feeding frenzy. Fish were bumping up against the side of the boat while Beth went for the video camera. This is the most fish we’ve seen in any spot. Seems like the protection of the park is doing some good.
Monday we decided it was time to give a little back to the park, so we signed up as volunteers. Andrew assigned us to update the park map by walking the trails and recording the time between landmarks. That and pick-up trash on our way back.
We left park HQ at 0930 and walked along the eastern side of Warderick Wells Island. Now the wind was blowing 25 kts and the waves from Exuma Sound were pounding up against the cliffs creating lots of spray. This made for a wild, wet and windy walk. Noah counted 13 lizards of three varieties as we walked along. The views were awesome and we were the only people along the trail on the way south. Beth spotted some White Tailed Tropic Birds while taking a detour, but they were gone by the time Noah and I caught up.
Trails are marked by small piles of rocks called cairns, so they blend in with the natural limestone of the area. Noah was good at picking out the next cairn and showing us the way. We ran across one beautiful spot where a natural rock bridge had surf surging underneath and breaking over the top. Of course we didn’t bring the camera as we had expected to be sanding a boat or mending mooring lines.
After timing the trails on the way down, we broke out the big leaf bag and started picking up plastic washed up on the beaches between the cliffs. I never thought plastic could be so heavy! It was 1430 by the time we returned to park HQ. The trash bag was left about half a mile back near a beach where we could retrieve it by dinghy.
The ride back to the boat was into the wind and all three of us were drenched. After showering off with fresh water Beth made bread and Molasses Gingersnap Cookies to warm us up — yum.
Met a couple from Albany, NY moored on a boat behind us and gave them photos of their boat with a rainbow in the background. It is an old Chris Craft 37 in beautiful condition. It was news to me that Chris Craft had ever made sailboats.
None of us had any trouble getting to sleep. Noah didn’t even complain when we said it was time for lights out at 2100.
Today we were up at 0630 to catch Chris Parker’s weather forecast and it sounds like Thursday might be a possibility for crossing to Eluthera with winds down to 17 kts and the seas settling down to under 8 feet. Will listen again in the morning and see if we want to move to a marina and get water and do laundry in preparation for moving on.
After breakfast we headed back to HQ to continue where we left off yesterday. We were a little better prepared today and brought the handheld GPS and the little camera. Walked five trails on the lee side of the island and had a much more relaxing day. Noah found more lizards, a couple of hermit crabs and a brown snake. He enjoyed visiting the “Pirates Lair” where pirate ships once waited to ambush sailors. I did one trail alone and surprised a pair of Hutia (rodents similar in size to muskrats) that promptly scurried into a hole in the limestone. By 1500 we reported back to Andrew with the new trail times. After two visits to the park, we have now walked all eighteen trails and even timed a trail that wasn’t on the map.
Relaxing in the cockpit before dinner we noticed a trio of small sails coming toward us. Kayaks materialized with small lanteen sails pushing them up in the lee of the island. We’d heard that there were some kayakers traveling from Georgetown up through the Exumas chain. Made us feel like weather wimps as these tiny craft glided past and disappeared to our North.