Moving to Warderick Wells

The next morning we made a plan with 3 Lil Birds to head down to Warderick Wells, the headquarters of the Exumas Land and Sea Park, and pick up moorings in their main channel for a few days. We called them at 0900 to make a reservation, and then got on with our morning, using the last of our cinnamon raisin bread from the Island Farm in Eleuthera to make French toast, yum! Cecelia and I caught up on school for a bit, and then we got busy making the boat ready to sail.

In order to time the tide and current as we would be heading into the mooring field, we left Hawksbill at 1100. We got to sail most of the way, with full sails up, on what was a really beautiful day!

We even plotted our course so that we could exit the park for a while to try to catch some fish (you can’t fish inside the park boundaries) but, sadly, had no luck. Still, it was a great sail.

Once we turned into the anchorage from the cut, the deep part of the channel at Warderick was narrow, with moorings dotted in a line right down the center. We figured out that we should go to windward of the mooring balls in order to stay in deep water (it got shallow fast!) and did a quick 360 in the channel to pick up our assigned ball. We did a nice job picking the mooring up smoothly, while the charter boat on the mooring next to ours watched us closely. (It’s always funny to see other boats watching while you do maneuvers. We do the same thing, of course, but we do try not to be super obvious about it.)

What a beautiful spot, though! The water was several stunning shades of teal. We dinghied to shore to check in with the park warden and pay for our mooring. We picked up snorkel and hiking maps while we were there, and discovered they had reasonably priced ice cold beers in the fridge as well.

We walked down to the beach and ran into the crew from Lucky, who we had met back in Rock Sound. Cecelia played on the beach with Leanne and her brothers from Lucky, and Levi from 3 Lil Birds. The adults all talked to each other about how nice it was to finally see some nice weather!

After beach time, we had dinner on the boat, and then dinghied across to the other side of the mooring field to have a movie night on 3 Lil Birds. We had suggested Slumberland, which is an excellent movie for kids and adults alike. Cecelia spent a lot of time on the floor with their dog, Patch, who is a sweet Australian Cattle Dog. He took an instant shine to her as well. The wind picked up while we were movie watching, and it was a windy/splashy ride back to our boat, but worth it for a fun end to the day!

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