Steve and Laura's Excellent Adventure

  The Exumas Land and Sea Park at Warderick Wells was the next stop in our journey. The resources I read described wonderful snorkeling, hiking, and other attractions such as a whale's skeleton on the beach. It was definitely on my "must do" list, and in fact, turned out to be the site of my favorite sighting in the Bahamas. People often ask where my favorite place has been during our Excellent Adventure, and I honestly can't answer that question because the places we've been are often not comparable and I love different things about each of them. I can now say, at least, I have a favorite experience.   Right Whale Skeleton on Whale Beach at Warderick Wells   Warderick Wells was relatively close to our previous stop, Shroud Cay, and we decided to go ahead and move on April 26th, even though sailing was out of the question. We motored and checked in at the Park Office in the early afternoon, suiting up afterwards for our afternoon snorkel. I was immediately capt

I will start this post with a disclaimer: one of our biggest “misses” in the equipment department was that we did not purchase an underwater camera. The consequence of this is that I will have to try to describe that which is indescribably beautiful, and that any underwater pictures in this post are not mine. I will not make the same mistake next year! Once we had arrived in the Exuma Islands, our plan was to use our charts and explorer’s guide to identify specific islands that looked interesting, and then explore them one by one – staying at each until we were ready to move on to the next. We would keep going further down the Exuma chain of islands until it was time to turn around and start heading north towards our launching point for the crossing back to Florida. This meandering approach was wonderful and allowed us to witness the variety of artistry that nature has to offer, even within a relatively small area, where one might think everything would all look the same. Highbourne Ca

We were joined in Marsh Harbour by our friends, Jan and Mark on April 16 th . We have a long-standing friendship with them starting when our kids were young, when we spent many fun-filled hours camping, boating, and snorkeling together. Since they are also both retired now, they were free to join us for a longer time, so they flew down to the Bahamas and will sail back with us to Florida in three weeks or so. Although Steve and I haven’t fully explored the Abacos , we were anxious to check out a different part of the Bahamas, so we weighed anchor the day after their arrival and started heading southward towards the Exuma islands. Satellite View of the Northern Exuma Islands  Our path is shown in the map below, starting at Marsh Harbour, stopping in Spanish Wells and Current Cay in northern Eleuthera, and then travelling to Highbourne Cay in the northern Exuma Islands. The islands in the part of the Exumas that we will explore are (not visible) in the circled area in the bottom of th