Allen's Cay to Warderick Wells, Land and Sea Park

Allens Cay to Warderick Wells (Exuma Land and Sea Park)

 

I woke up at 6am. Do you think that I wake up at 6am at home to get ready to go to work or to enjoy the weekend? Hell no! There is very little that I hate worse than mornings, but when you are out on Holiday on the water, mornings are awesome! Last one up has to make the bed. Now, that is usually Mark. He does a horrible job of making the bed. I guess that I am a little bit of a neat freak and that everything has to be organized a certain way or I kind of freak out within my own self…. But we are out here in the ocean and I have to think…who is going to see it? Who is going to care?  Am the only one that need to be satisfied…so I pause and am glad that my husband made the bed. First one up makes the coffee, so it isn’t like I am trying to be lazy, I am trying to save Mark from himself. He has burned himself quite a few times on the boat trying to make coffee. I  have basically forbid him from doing this.

 

We head out on the dinghy to shore to check out the dilapidated building, ruins, that are left on shore. We read that are supposed to be prehistoric lizards that are on shore weighing up to 25lbs. and they bite. Yikes! Our adventure was fun and I got some great pictures. We went to the other side, where the grass is greener, and I ventured out on my own crawling across the limestone and all of the sudden in the mangroves I heard this huge movement. It sounded like the size of a large dog…and I was SO OUT OF THERE!

 

There is a storm coming….we see it, but there is nothing that we can do. The current is so strong we will never get back in time to close the hatches. The boat will be soaked in this downpour. Better the fresh rain than the saltwater sprays that we get off the ocean. Yup, it is soaked and I do my best to wipe it all off. We haven’t had much sun lately to dry it all up, hope it doesn’t all mildew.

 

We head out on our sail to Warderick Well at about 10am. Mark goes to pull the anchor and realizes that the anchor rhode is wrapped around the keel. This isn’t our first rodeo for this adventure. We assessed the situation and came up with a few scenarios. It was a little sketchy since we had a catamaran anchored next to us maybe 30yd.  All of which went out the window once we dropped the boat hook over the side of the boat in an attempt to pull up the rhode. Mark went off the back of the boat and snorkeled about. He got the boat hook back and directed me where to steer the boat. We were able unwrap the anchor rhode from our wing keel. And we are off.

 

We had a great downwind run which was so greatly welcomed after all of our hard beating into the wind. We are doing about 6.5-7 knots and have surf behind us pushing us along. We will grab a mooring ball at Exuma Park for $20. They also have wifi for 24 hours or 100mb. Okay, 100mb is NOTHING! We did what we needed, like weather, writing to our guests that are coming aboard that we are not going to be able to make it to them, weather, blogging and you guessed it…weather. We have a Northerly and it is blowing like Stink. I just saw on the navigation instruments, 29knots of wind. Ugh. We are on a mooring ball and we pray that it holds. I believe that it is drilled into bedrock and then they attach a mooring  ball on a really thick rope. We come by it with our boat hook and grab the thimble in the rope and run our line through that and attach it to two cleats on our boat. Is it strong? We have no way of knowing. The ropes look good and thick that we attached to. I just walked out to the cockpit though and check the instruments. The boat is rocking like crazy and the wind is howling. It is blowing 29knots. I am glad that we are on a mooring ball and not on anchor but still freaked because the wind is so strong and there is a catamaran 30yds in front of us on a mooring ball that we have no idea how strong it is. All these unknowns…welcome to the sailing world.

 

It is kind of funny to read, or write, all of this. People tell us all the time how “lucky” we are that we get to do all of this. We chose to do this. We made it happen. It is beautiful, fun, adventurous, unsure, scary, and “oh my gosh I want to go home”. But it is something that only few will be able to do. I am thrilled to be here! (Scared but thrilled). What is living if you don’t take to the adventures that life has to offer.  Tomorrow is a new day….what will become of it?