(Photo: Semper V's boat marker at Boo Boo Hill)
Our dive at the "sea aquarium" as the dinghy mooring where I lost my fin is known was incredible. I lost count of the number of different fish we saw, including spectacular Queen angelfish, rock beauties, banded butterflyfish, supermale blueheads, queen parrotfish, queen triggerfish, yellowtail damselfish....and so on. The "ooohs!" and "wows!" emitting from the girls' snorkels punctuated their excitement as new and more colourful fish swam into view. The lobsters hiding in the crevices below had to be a metre long. Enormous. We reluctantly ended our diving when the current started to pick up again, but thrilled with the variety of shapes, sizes and colours we had seen.
We ended our stay at Warderick Wells with a nature hike led by Bill from "Highlander", whom we have crossed paths with on several occasions since the ICW. In the 1700s, Warderick Wells and most of the other cays around here were heavily treed, with a soil layer likely another ten metres higher than the current surface. The British colonised the area, and since the trees made wonderful spars and masts for is burgeoning merchant and fighting fleets, it was essentially clear cut in no time (see my previous entry at Hawksbill Cay). The soil that was left was fertile and used to grow sugar cane, and so plantations popped up throughout the cays, mainly built by Loyalists who fled the United States during the American Revolution. Of course, without the trees to anchor the soil and retain moisture, the soil was blown off, and we are left with the hard rock and sand and scrubby vegetation that has adapted and proved incredibly resilient in such a harsh, saline environment. It's a story that repeats itself to this very day, the lessons from which we continue to ignore or apply half-measured remedies, and assume that the next generation will be able to do something about it while there is still time, so long as it doesn't affect the gross consumption habits of the wealthy nations. There's my rant for the day.
Our last act was to leave our boat marker at the top of Boo Boo Hill, which has become a depository for all sorts of tokens with visiting boats' names carved or painted on them. We left ours next to a marker for the Charlotte Lane Cafe in Shelburne NS, where we had one of the best meals I ever tasted, and we picked out quite a few other boats' markers both from home and whom we have met en route. At noon we slipped our mooring and headed south with our friends in Wind of Peace to Staniel Cay, home of the reknowned Thunderball Grotto.