Needed our "Big Girl Panties" on.........

After spending three nights at Highborne Cay we decided it was time to head south. We have not made it into the Exuma Sound yet as it has been very windy. The winds have been blowing 25+ knots pretty much night and day since arriving at Highborne. The seas on the Exuma Sound are 7 to 9 feet..........doesn't sound like much fun. It appears the Dolphin are biting out there as we have seen a couple bigger boats with fish. The north end of the Sound is similar to the Pocket in the Tongue of the Ocean. With the winds from the southeast it should push the fish right up into the north end but not for us at this time. We decided to head out yesterday. We got John & Lori's dinghy (patched two more holes before loading it)and motor loaded on the back of his boat and headed out. The nice thing about traveling the Exumas is that if the wind is from the east you can stay on the inside or on the Exuma Bank and have some protection or if it is from the west you can travel the Sound and have protection. The key word here is "some" protection. The winds were about the highest so far, 25+ knots, when we pulled out but it was time to go. We thought we could handle the 25 nm run to Warderick Wells. It really wasn't too bad, lots of sea water on the curtains and a little rockin and rollin. There is one area called "Wide Open" where there is no protection and it got pretty rough, about 4 to 6 feet seas, but it only lasted a little while. This is where the "big girl panty" subject was brought up! There are mooring buoys here at Warderick Wells. It is the headquarters for the "Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park." It is the first land & sea park in the world. It covers 176 square miles and stretches 22 miles from Wax Cay Cut to Conch Cut and extends 4 nautical miles on either side of the cays. It is a no-take zone by both land and sea, nothing living or dead can be taken from the park. Take only pictures and leave only footprints they say..... The mooring buoys were set in the middle of a narrow channel. The buoys have a tag line with a smaller float on the end. The idea is to ease up to the smaller buoy and pick it up with the boat hook and run a line through the eye on the end of the mooring line and back to the cleat on the boat. Usually you put 2 lines to the 2 cleats on the front of the boat so the boat stays straight behind. There was a lot of current and kind of tight quarters so CJM was not sure whether she wanted to handle the lines or run the boat but after some discussion she opted to run the boat. It worked perfectly, we picked up the line on the first try and were secured in a few minutes. It did not work quite as well for John & Lori. She opted to handle the lines and when she almost had the line through the loop, the boat hook fell out of her hand into the ocean. She dove in after it. John handled the boat perfectly to get it into position to retrieve her and she had retrieved the boat hook. We had not put our dinghy in the water yet, we were just relaxing and having a beer when this all happened. There were two other boaters who immediately showed up at the scene to assist them and they were secure in a matter of minutes. Now it was definitely cocktail hour. More on Warderick Wells tomorrow.

CTM