Warderick Wells

The Exuma Land & Sea Park is a protected area where they prefer you to hook to a mooring ball and not throw the anchor to ensure the reefs don’t get damaged.  You cannot fish, catch, or take anything from the park.  This means that the snorkeling is AMAZING in protected waters of the park.  We spent most of the day hiking the whole island of Warderick Wells.  There are trails all over the island and much to see.  We figure we hiked about 8 miles total.  We saw blowholes, walked the ridge of a cliff with crashing waves, millions of lizards, ruins, tide pools, serene beaches, a rock wall that runs the width of the island (who knows why is was built?), a pile of driftwood with boat names carved, and a ton of “treasure” that has washed up on shore.  Good news we only ended up hiking back with 2 “treasures” to pack on our boat!!!!  After our hike we were ready for a swim and Lucy was ready to get off the boat and go to the beach.  She isn’t allowed anywhere but the beaches in the park.  We decided to snorkel off Emerald Rock.  At first we didn’t think we had found a good spot, until we turned the corner right into a shark!  He was just hanging out under a ledge and had no interest in us.  After him we saw some colorful coral with the biggest lobsters we have seen yet and millions of fish.  Too bad we were in the park or we would have had surf and turf for dinner.  We left the next morning with one thing in mind.  Find some lobsters for dinner.  Our plan was to anchor just outside the park around some smaller rocks and coral heads hoping some of those giants wandered a little too far from their protected area.  Preston read in a book somewhere that most people that sail around claim to be sailors, but use their engines every chance they get.  He went on to say he had never seen anyone sail into an anchorage and drop hook.  We all know Preston loves a challenge and so that was his goal for the day.  We sailed a few hours south to Pipe Cay and tacked around to where we were going to anchor.  We had both sails up, Dan was steering, Preston was at the anchor ready to drop it and I was in charge of pulling in the jib and dropping the main at the precise time that Preston was dropping the anchor.  Before we knew it the anchor hit the sand and plowed in.  I had both sails in and we were in the water looking for lobsters.  Of course the wind was coming at a perfect 60 degrees to our starboard at 8 knots, we had 500 yards all around us of 10 foot deep water with sandy bottom, and we were the only boat in sight.  So yes we dropped the anchor without turning on the motors YAY!! Does it count even though we were in perfect conditions with no obstacles to work around?