Bell Cay & Warderick Wells

Monday morning as we left Pipe Cay, the water was like glass. Underway, it was one of those rare times when the interface between the sky and sea was virtually nonexistent. It was soooo very beautiful!

The Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park is a very large group of islands that are protected by a trust. They don't allow shelling, conching, fishing and, in many cases, anchoring. Instead, they have installed a network of mooring balls for cruisers to use in order to minimize any disruption of the sea life.

We anchored in a beautiful little bay off of Bell Island, a private island.

Notice the anchor chain dribbled over the ocean floor.

We had a good time snorkeling around some beautiful coral & sponges that had lots of fish. We also snorkeled around a plane that crashed in this area years ago.

The prevailing winds in the Bahamas are east. Today, they were very light and generally from the west so we had an opportunity to enjoy the sunset from the bow.

Tuesday, we left earlier than usual in order to get out of our anchorage before low tide. Coming in, there was 1 place we only had 1 foot of water under us and we realllly didn't want to repeat that!

We travelled 17 miles to a mooring field near the Exuma Cays Park headquarters and picked up a mooring near a pretty beach.

We headed in to the park headquarters to check things out and hike up to Boo Boo Hill, a place we had been to several times before.

This is "Stinky", a pilot whale who had washed ashore here. Stinky is on the left. LOL.

And this is the skeleton of a 52' sperm whale who died from ingesting too much plastic & other garbage in the ocean

It's a good thing Banshee Creek was dry at low tide. We had to walk through it to get to Boo Boo Hill.

Our destination lies on top of the hill.

Notice all of the sail boats moored along the very narrow deep water passage here!

Some say Boo Boo hill was named for the sounds the blow holes make when the ocean is surging. Some say it's named for a sailor who made a boo boo and wrecked his boat just off shore here. In any case, it is now a repository of all kinds of mementos left behind by boaters. 

After lunch we went snorkeling through a fast-moving cut. We had an enormous eagle ray with maybe an 8 foot wingspan pass right under us - wow! We also saw some turtles munching on some coral & sponges, a fairly large reef shark and a wide variety of fish.