Wardrick Wells

At Wardrick Wells, the Exuma Land and Sea Park Headquarters, we like to spend at least one day in the semicircular mooring field. Swift, erratic currents make the mooring difficult, but once tucked in, you are close to the hiking trails and safe from any storm winds and waves.The hike to Boo Boo Hill to view the signs left by previous visitors is mandatory. We hiked with Lou and Nancy to the top, this time in high tide, which meant wading through knee deep water on some parts of the trail, an adventure which gave us visions of manta rays scuttling out of our reach. We took our dinghys around to the opposite side of Wardrick Wells for the first time and discovered a beautiful, sheltered anchorage to try on the next visit.

Wardrick Wells also offers an enormous coral head garden, with rocks, giant lobsters, colorful coral and fish. The snorkeling is in the park headquarters mooring field and offers an easy, but lovely snorkeling opportunity. This time it also offered a 6 foot nurse shark. We know they are not man-eaters,. We know they are not aggressive, but we left the underwater diving to the shark.

Lovely Shroud Cay and Hawksbill

Shroud The name suggests death and mystery, but Shroud Cay means Bahamian blues, grey rocks, sunlight and white sands. Black Pearl and Wind Dancer arrived early to explore a pretty inlet opposite the mooring field. Only 5 mooring balls are operational. Last year there were 12.

 After the arrival of Emerald City and Atlantica, we enjoyed cocktails on the beach.

 In the morning, our
 four boats traveled in two dinghys up the tidal creek and through to the Atlantic beach. You must go on a rising tide and return before the creek levels sink too low. Reaching the other side is a treat, wide shallow beach, swift current flooding and ebbing through a rock sided channel, hills and rocks to climb, lots of birds to watch.

In the evening, more beach cocktails with friends and strangers on the beach at low tide.

Hawksbill, the close neighbor of Shroud has a beautiful anchorage and beach  also.

Norman's Island and a "Little " Squall.

Bright, beautiful Bahamian weather greeted us at Norman's Island. We arrived in time at 6:00 and enjoyed a quiet dinner aboard. In the morning, we took the dinghy in for a tour of the island and a late lunch at McDuffs, of a Sprite, a beer, and some Conch Fritters....for $50! The place has been spruced up. It looks charming, spotless bathrooms, and friendly staff....but a bit of sticker shock if you are hungry.  We also walked down past the runway and were given a guided tour of the new resort and marina under construction. The security guard picked us up in a golf cart and showed us all the work being done there. It's going to be beautiful, but if the lunch at McDuffs is any indication, we probably will not be visiting the marina. We lingered over lunch quite a while and when we stepped outside and walked back to our dinghy, this is what we saw.

It didn't get any better as we raced toward our boats. It was nip and tuck to see which would arrive at the boat first, the squall or the dinghy!

Our little 9 foot dinghy with a 6 hp engine at full throttle made it in time for the Lippis to leap onto their boat and take us 60 feet further to ours. As we were tying the dinghy, the storm hit!  There was a lot of wind and sideways rain.Checking the anchor line and snubber resulted in a soaking. We were a little worried that Black Pearl had anchored too close to us, but no problem as their snubber line broke, let out another 20 feet of line and dragged anchor another 50 feet or more before Lou managed to reset the anchor and tie another snubber. Pretty exciting end to the day.

On to Nassau

We took our time getting to Nassau, stopping one night at Bond Key. The area is beautiful, but it is a long way in, and our E-80 Raymarine chart was off by several hundred feet....not a problem if you enter at high tide, but we scuffed along the sand and felt our way gently across the waters, our depth sounder reading 6 feet or less. Don't think well try that spot again. We should have trusted the ipad with Navionics. Their charts were more accurate. The deep water anchoring hole proved to be just over 7 feet at low tide and it was over a half mile dinghy ride to the beach.

On May 11, 2017, we motored into the Nassau Harbor, our first time there. The Nassau Harbor Club Hotel and Marina, on the far side of the harbor, proved to be a safe and nicely located marina, across the street from the shopping area with grocery store and Starbucks, which had wifi, very nice since the wifi at the marina was weak. Lots of nice people there. The bathrooms, however, were terrible, clogged toilets and dirty. We went sightseeing and exploring while we waited for Atlantica to join us. One of our best meals was freshly caught conch salad under the bridge in Nassau.

Our exploration took us up The Queens Staircase to  Fort Fincastle at the top of the island.There is also a pretty colonial center of town in Nassau. We were surprised to find the town much smaller than expected. An interesting fact. You can walk the mile and a half, or take a cab from the marina to downtown, for about $20, or you can ride the local bus for about 50 cents.

Atlantica arrived in Nassau to join us for the rest of the trip. However, Emerald City needed some work. Black Pearl and Wind Dancer chose to journey to Norman Island, in the Exumas. Traditionally, people pass through the White Bank, keeping a sharp eye out for its well known wicked coral heads. We took the recommended, slightly longer route, between the White Bank and the Yellow Bank, passed lots of big boats along the way and never saw less than 15 feet of water. Never saw a coral head or rocks the entire way. The day's travel was slightly longer than anticipated in bumpy seas,  with 5 hours of running the engine, and 3 hours of sailing. We arrived at 4:00 and anchored off Norman Island.

Great Harbor Lives Up to its Name May 2017

After spending one night outside Great Harbor, we decided to enter Bullocks Harbor and enjoy their beautiful beach and restaurants. The brilliant blue Bahamian waters greeted us here. This is one of our favorite places.

Caravan to the Bahamas

In May, 2015, four boats set sail for the Bahamas, Lou and Nancy on Black Pearl, Jose and Char, on Atlantica, Rich and Mary Jim, on Emerald City and Rick and Cookie on Wind Dancer. Emerald City and Black Pearl, left Boca Chicac on the 2nd, with Wind Dancer leading the way, and stopped first at Marathon, behind Boot Key, and secondly on the east side of Rodriguez Island. The sail to Marathon was perfect, with nice SSE breezes  at 10 to 12 knots to speed us on our way.  A wind shift to the east became a motor slog into the wind as the wind direction shifted to the east on our way to Rodriguez.  Timing was perfect and the Gulf Stream was benign as we motor-sailed for 10 hours to Bimini. The easiest place to stay in Bimini is Bimini Sands. Bimini is one of the few well marked harbors in the Bahamas, and Bimini Sands is almost straight ahead  from the entry markers. Our one concern was the autopilot, which mysteriously lost way 4 times on the way to Marathon, and twice, while crossing the Gulf Stream. Never bothered us again during the trip.

We left Bimini at 7am to motor sail 13 hours across the bank to reach Great Harbor and anchor at sunset, another beautiful day on the water.

March, a Month of Loss

We had planned a trip to Chile and lots of Key West sailing in March. But it was not to be. The event that we had dreaded since Cookie's mother had to go into a nursing home occurred. Dorothy Rollins Vogler,my exuberant, spontaneous mother passed on to a newer life. She did not go quietly. She fought until the end, three times defying the doctors predictions and recommendations that she should be in hospice. and she would never leave her bed again. My mother taught me many things, appreciation for life and living, laughter, humor, love of friends and family, the joy of trying new adventures and in the end, to never quit trying. With each new setback, she had struggled to walk again and to enjoy what remained of her life. Dorothy was a sailor too. She loved the wind and the water and racing other boats. She and my Dad used to race Rebel sailboats on a lake in Illinois. She started as first mate, but had a real feel for the boat and eventually became the captain. So this month is a tribute to Mom. Words cannot express the depth of our loss. But it was time, Mom. You broke our hearts with your valiant attempts to hang onto the life you so very much wanted to have, long after we knew it could never be.

January Brings Sailing and Company

January in Key West means Key West Race Week. What we didn't know was that this would be the last year of Key West Race Week and the last year of many things Key West, although we did not know it.  Bill and Jill visited us during Race Week. We were thrilled to show Bill, my sailor brother, and Jill, our sister-in-law, the joys of Key West sailing. Our co-grandparents, the Hutchins were back in Key West for the winter too and joined us for several sails.

 And the joys of Key West dining at Blue Heaven.

We had our regular evening conch blowing at sunset, although a few of the nights were a bit chilly.

January was a good month in Key West.

November 2015 to October 2016 A Year in Review

Because we had an interrupted sailing season this year, there have been no updates.  We returned to Boca Chica in the fall of 2016, sailing south , uneventfully with buddy boaters, Luke and Jan Sand.
Winter in Key West brought another January Wreckers Race win. January seems to be our lucky month for the Wreckers Race. We also had our usual complement of visitors. This time the Peters and the Malotts paid us a visit.

Spring cruising suffered from several interruptions. The first interruption was  a fabulous Atlantic crossing shipboard cruise with marina friends, followed by a land tour of France, Italy, and Spain, primarily with Jose and Char Pagan, sailing friends who are now land traveling buddies as well. The final interruption was due to family health issues, which caused us to sprint back to South Carolina aboard Wind Dancer and fly to Illinois.
.Home in Dataw for the summer, we managed some day sails, including a day with children and grandchildren exploring the Morgan River.

Disaster struck in October in the form of Hurricane Matthew. We had company visiting, Kit and Tom Gunn, who had arisen at 3 am to catch an early morning flight to Savannah. We arrived back at Dataw and had just finished lunch when the announcement came for a mandatory evacuation, Hurricane Matthew had taken an unexpected turn toward us! I drove the Gunns back to the Savannah airport, while Rick raced down to get Wind Dancer on the schedule to be taken out of the water the next morning. We were the last boat to be pulled from the water. Don't know know the full story, but when Matthew arrived 2 days later, 26 boats went down with the marina. Years of neglect by the current owners and powerful wind and waves pummeling the dock from the northeast,  across the open expanse of marshland from the St. Helena Sound, caused the violent breakup of the docks. Two heavily damaged boats survived on a small piece of intact dock. The rest were sunk or carried into yards or miles away onto the airport runway. Maybe a half dozen boats were able to be repaired. The rest were lost and our marina gone.

We left for Key West three weeks later.our journey down was uneventful, but we did not realize that our blissful winters in Key West were nearing their end.