Yellow Banks, Hawksbill Cay and Warderick Wells

We found the Starbucks in Nassau. So now we were free to leave.

We think we left Nassau on February 17th, but who really knows. We were bound for the Exumas. There was another mass exodus when the weather cleared. It looked like a bomb scare. With winds between 15 and 23 knots, it was a blustery broadreach to Hawksbill Cay. Our first time crossing the Yellow Banks went well. It is a shallower area with coral heads that might try to ruin your day. So one crew member goes to the bow to guide the helmsperson around any potential danger. We dodged all the coral heads, all the grass, and all the clouds that made the water look dark. You can call it luck, but we will call it skill. The clouds are the hardest because they move right when you get to them.


We anchored at Hawksbill Cay with two other boats from the marina in Nassau. Hawksbill was our first beach anchorage. We still can't believe we have our boat in water like this.


Dinghy and the beach.

We stayed at Hawksbill Cay for two days trying to figure out where to go to weather the next cold front. It is easy to find shelter from winds from the NNE to SSE, but when the winds go west it gets a little trickier. Most of the protection from westerly winds are between cays with strong reversing currents.


Warderick Wells.

We decided to go to Warderick Wells. You have to get a mooring to stay there, but there is decent protection all around. There are a lot of boats in the Exumas, so when the winds clock to the west, there is a rush to the areas with good westerly protection. Because the more popular north mooring field was full, we ended up going to the more remote south mooring field. Most boats don't go there because you have to go out into Exuma Sound to get there. There were 3 boats there when we got in, but they all left early the next morning. So we had it all to ourselves for three days. It was beautiful. The tidal currents are extremely strong. Boaters know that when anchored, the bow of the boat is normally pointed into the wind. We were getting sustained winds in the upper twenties, with gusts over thirty which stayed on our beam. The mooring ball banging away on the hull. This was because the current overpowered the wind. Next time I will experiment with locking the rudder to turn into the wind. I don't know if that will work or not. You have to make sure your dinghy is well secured or it will be gone gone bye bye.
This was a perfect hiding place for pirates back in the day. Pirates could anchor site unseen in the cove, and pounce on unsuspecting ships going through the cut. And... there was a well with good water. The water in that well looks black now.

While we were there, we did some hiking. The terrain is limestone that looks like Swiss cheese. OSHA would not approve of these trails. It is like walking on a combination of thumb tacks and knives. I started to wonder how I would get back to the boat if I blew out a flip flop. Lisa had reef shoes on, so no problem there. There were not many living beings that we could see. We did see one bird, one little tiny snake, and three members of the rat family. This is on a protected island. Maybe we have upset nature's course by protecting it. There are a lot of large holes that look like wells.


We use this bucket to check our anchor. I cut a hole in the bottom and glued lexan (they didn't have plexi glass) to the bottom of it with some 5200. A friend of ours, we will call her Leta, calls this white trash snorkeling. I couldn't have said it better. Here I am trying to figure out what kind of fish are attacking our boat. When I would raise the dinghy on the davits, the fish went crazy biting the drops of water falling off the dinghy. By the way, this method of checking your anchor set will not work in Texas or Louisiana.