2016 Bahamas Adventure: Warderwick Wells, Exumas

Our luck with wind direction ran out this morning – it was coming from where we wanted to go Fortunately, the wind speed was lower than yesterday, enabling us to comfortably motor sail the 25 or so miles down to Warderwick Wells under partly sunny skies.

Warderwick and the surrounding islands form an underwater sea park where no fishing is allowed and coral heads are very well protected and nicely healthy.

We arrived around lunchtime, put ourselves on a mooring, had lunch and then set off to explore the Island. The park contains a number of hiking trails, one of which leads to a “haunted” hill (Boo-Boo hill) and nearby beach. The legend is that a ship sank off the eastern coast of Warderwick with all hands lost. The bodies of the unfortunates were never recovered and they are believed to haunt the island’s sand dunes and beaches -- if you listen carefully when the wind is howling and the surf is high, you should be able to hear them moaning.

We hiked up to the top of Boo-Boo hill and visited the nearby Boo-Boo beach – for the record we were unable to hear the lost souls. However we did leave a record of our visit on the top of Boo-Boo hill – see the picture below.

On the return trip, we visited some “blow holes” which are gaps in the seaside cliffs through which the surf explodes when the winds and seas are high – being a moderate wind and sea day, we’ll have to take their word for it.

Our excursion ended with a swim at a quiet and lovely beach that overlooked the anchorage.
Day two was devoted to snorkeling; highlights were a pair of huge rays, one of whose tails was at least 8-foot long; a pair of Nassau grouper just hanging around, waiting for lunch to float by and a giant lobster, deep in a hole in the reef, you could only see its legs and one eye.