Sorry for missing pictures, but if you check back in a week or so, we should have all pics posted. The problem is bandwidth in our current location all the way back to our last days at Coral Harbour. We hope to have better connectivity very soon.
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We have been in the south mooring field at Warderick Wells for three days, enjoying the park and waiting for weather. This is Capture Beach near Pirates' Lair at Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, right beside our moored boat:

Exuma Park Capture Beach

Why Pirates' Lair? Well, here:


After a windy night (25 kts NE) as the front resolved itself and moved through, the wind has swung farther east and gotten calmer, almost back to the usual for this area. We plan on leaving tomorrow, heading a bit south of here to Big Majors spot just north of Staniel Cay, within a fairly short dinghy ride of the cave, where we intend to snorkel with Grant -- but even better, Charisma (Chis and Marisa) are headed there from the south, so we can finally return their blocks (lent by Chris for the emergency steering device) and maybe feed them!

The coolness following the front (yes, 82F is cooler than it was yesterday) is very welcome. Yesterday, Derek's birthday (Happy Birthday!!!), Derek and Grant went to view blowholes on Hog Cay:

A blowhole on Hog Cay, the jet of water spraying up from the rock right behind the no anchoring buoy in this picture

and went snorkeling on the small reef at the south end of the cove, then Derek went snorkeling to find the stromatolites (resemble hairy rock-like doormats), which may not be much to look at, but have a lot of paleontological and even geological significance: these are the blue-green algae mats that formed "reefs" before corals even existed, and which consumed CO2 and excreted a deadly poison -- oxygen -- to such an extent that Earth's original mostly-CO2 atmosphere was replaced with 20% oxygen and nearly 80% inert nitrogen. The cove between Hog Cay and Warderick Wells is very well-protected from every direction, and it contains both stromatolites and moorings (NO anchoring in the park! You could hit a stromatolite and mess up someone's research project, not to mention they only exist in a few places around the globe currently), but unfortunately the deepwater entrance at the north end is pretty rough when the wind has been strong from NE, so although there are five excellent mooring balls here, only three of them are occupied today.

The southern entrance is only good for shoal-draft vessels such as small boats and catamarans -- that is the way we came in, and it leads onto the banks without going "outside" where the big waves are still kicking up (open seas for miles east of the chain of cays -- pronounced "keys"). Here's what the depth gauge looked like coming in over the shallow spot:


The Exumas are famed for amazing sailing partly because of this: prevailing easterly winds with an island chain sheltering the banks, so that you can sail really fast down the west side of this chain without paying the usual price of having to endure big waves.

When we arrived, the wind had been in the west for a day already and it was a relief to get in here and out of the chop... we did find our next boat project, though, which will be to rebed the fixed ports (windows) on the starboard side.

The next morning we hiked the 2.5 miles from Pirates Lair at the southern mooring field (SE end of Warderick Wells) to the park headquarters at the north end of the island. We passed pretty much every major feature of the park on the way: Pirates Lair, with its camping ring and mossy natural well,

that used to be used as a hidey-hole by pirates avoiding the authorities; "iron shore" terrain that was like hiking over fresh volcanic rock, sharp, black, and heat-reflective; gorgeous secluded beaches with white powdery sand; a terrain of big holes in the scoriated rock (these were right IN the trail, mind you),

some of which had wonderfully clear fresh water in them, and one of which had a ladder down into what actually would count as a cave (Murphy's Hideaway) along the top of the island ridgeline; Loyalist settler stone-house ruins from the time immediately following the American Revolution, when white American colonists loyal to England resettled in the Bahamas in pretty much any of the northern and central islands that had water sources (Abacos, Spanish Wells, Warderick Wells...),

and short palm forests. Everything EXCEPT Boo-Boo hill, which was out of our way, and by that time I was pretty much done with the hiking thing, all of us were out of water and I had wrenched my right knee on a downhill. It was rougher terrain than I had really expected given the altitude changes were matters of less than 50 meters, but over and over again, in rather tropical heat whenever the breeze was cut off by hills, and blazing sunlight at all times.

In addition to the knee and my SPF50 not really being enough to cope with the sun, I wound up with sore toenails from all the highly-tilted sections of the path along the rock parts, where your feet slide down in the hiking shoes until your toes are pressing up against the ends as you edge along the path partway up a hill that will take your skin right off -- at the very least -- should you fall. Whilst dodging, it should be said, rather than clinging for support to, the overhanging trees that happen to be poisonwood (others are not poisonous, but there is a lot of poisonwood on the southern half of the island on and around the trail). Oh, perfect :-) But seriously, it's beautiful and would have been better -- and easier to fully appreciate -- in more measured doses that did not overlap noon! Darcy at the Park office was a very welcome sight, and her fellow Ranger was a godsend, getting us some water from their supply.

Which is why yesterday, Derek and Grant did most of the exploring: that, and I had to catch up with my online class, so that my students would not think I had become sharkbait and left them in the lurch... today we are going out snorkeling again once Grant is through with school for the day.