A tense arrival in the Exumas - Waderick Wells

It may have been a bit scary getting here but wow!

We had to time our departure from Cape Eleuthera based on reaching the Waderick Wells cut at slack water to avoid going in when the water is rushing out against the wind, which can create really ugly conditions. So we had leisurely start to the day and left about 10am. We had a lovely off the wind sail once we left the shadow of Eleuthera. Our friends on Mac sailed passed us, heading further down the Exuma chain, they had a little more wind and were lighter than us, however we caught a fabulous fish - it's been a while since we had a 'fish drill' on Askari and we were a little rusty and I just couldn't gaff the poor thing, however Andrew grabbed it into the dinghy - a lovely dorado / mani mahi. I hate seeing the colours fade from these beautiful creatures, but they are fantastic eating.

Lovely sail to the Exumas

Sad but yummy

One minute you are in hundreds of metres of water, then we turned in through the cut and in seconds the depth sounder reads 50 metres, then 10, oh then 5 then barely enough for Askari.

Arriving at Waderick Wells

I had spoken to the Exuma Park on the radio and they confirmed they had a mooring ball for us and gave us the instructions to find it. We gingerly entered the park entrance, which is a narrow and very shallow channel. Before we even got through the first set of markers we touched the bottom, so we decided to wait an hour for the tide to rise a few inches and picked up a mooring on the outside. What we really hadn't considered though was that the current really runs fast through these narrow passes in the sand.....

The tide had come up enough and it was late in the day and we were keen to get on the mooring on the inside. We entered the channel and it was mostly 20 cm under our keel, the water was easy to read with the different colours which was just as well as we had no room for mistakes. The current was pushing us along at 3knots, so Andrew needed to keep on some speed too for steerage, meaning we were going 6 knots down a narrow channel, passing other boats within a metre to stay in the deep water.

We cut across the channel where there was a gap in the boats, then heard a big clunk on the propeller, we hit a line under the water but had no time to investigate - it turned out to be a mooring that had lost it's float but luckily it didn't foul our prop. As we passed one yacht, they shouted the clear instructions for us to turn into the central mooring field for deeper boats. The depth dropped to 10 cm (less than 4 inches) but then we turned into the deeper pool and despite racing hearts managed to grab the mooring and take a deep breath. Wow that was pretty full on...... 

View our drone footage here to see the landscape and the entry channel - Askari is moored in the centre all on our own, shallower draft boats tend to be allocated spots in the entrance channel.

We really should have stayed overnight outside the national park and then arrived at slack high the next day and we learned a few lessons about the currents that run close to these cuts in the reef in the process. Leaving a week later was far more relaxed!

Beautiful Exumas

Askari in between two palm trees

The Exuma Park is spectacular, not just the colour of the water and fabulous snorkelling but there are great walks that run for miles. We spent most days taking a hike and then snorkelling at close to slack tide. The drift snorkel was a lot of fun too, where we tied the dinghy onto us. There are about 8 spotted eagle rays that live in the park plus lots of turtles, nurse sharks and two quite large lemon sharks. We got to know where they would be at the different times of the day and spent hours in the water with these fantastic creatures. Here's some go-pro footage.....

This sand plane wasn't here 100 years ago

On top of the hill

Boo Boo Hill

Looking out on the ocean

We got to know the team at the Exuma park quite well and ended up spending more than a week in this gorgeous spot, they host sundowner drinks for the cruisers on a Saturday and when the Super Bowl was on set up to allow people to watch it. We totally loved this place and could have easily spent longer here

Cruisers happy hour at Exuma Park