Day 8 Exuma Cruise

Ah sweet lessons of life!

Lo these many years ago when I first installed the water maker I gave title thought to the fact that I would be installing other things in the path that I had initially thought that I could use to get to various service points, nor that I wasn't going to be getting any younger. I am thinking about things like the secondary raw water filter for instance. Now here at Wardwick Wells we thought that we would take the opportunity to change it and lo and behold we can't. Jeeze and crap. Oh well. Another job for when we put the boat up for the summer. Barb had a great idea that we should put it up in one of the storage lockers under the seats in the salon. There should be room and it would most definitely make servicing way easier. Maybe I could do that prior to picking the membrane as that is one of the things that would be facilitated as well.

This morning we went into the lodge to get access to the wifi so that we could put up yesterday's blog. Andrew, the park ranger, was showing us some of the stuff that he has to deal with with poachers. Local guys seem to think that it is not only good sport but also their right to come into the park and take lobsters and fish as they please. Not only that but the government doesn't seem to care enough to support the conservationists to pursue the local Bahamians. Visitors? You beacha! Lock 'em up, confiscate their boat and throw away the key, but not the local poachers. Me, I am of the mind that if the government doesn't care enough to maintain the law equitably then they deserve what they get as far as degrading the ecology and subsequently the tourism. He was also telling us that they have basically given up on trying to eradicate the lion fish. It is an invasive species but there are too many down sides to trying to rid the reef of them by spearing them. They simply can't kill them all, they are too numerous already and live down to 1000' and no one dives down that deep, when you kill them the divers are bringing a venomous animal back on the boat, it drives the local shark populations wild, etc, etc. Besides there are all sorts of invasive species in all parts of the world. Are we going to try to spear, shoot or chop down the all? Let's remember that we as humans are the most invasive specie of all.

Today we went hiking on one of the many trails that abound in this place but I will say that once inland away from the beach the place looks really desolate. There is nothing like a coral atoll with some spare vegetation to make you realize what happens either at the end of the world or when nature is messed with either by man or some extreme natural phenomena. The ranger told us that at one time all these Cays were lush with trees which were totally logged over. After that a couple of hurricanes later and all of the soil that had taken nature hundreds if not thousands of years to create was gone leaving the barren corral surface we now have. Regardless, the trails were dramatic and every one of them ended in a beautiful sandy beach somewhere else on the island. Some other folk bypassed the hiking and simply took their dingy over to the remoter beaches. We also took advantage of the situation and wen out to look at Emerald Cay and the moorings out there as well as the snorkelling moorings. Great spot.

When we came back there was a cat from Edmonton coming in to the mooring field right next to us that we decided to help by handing up the mooring painter. An act of kindness that could have had disastrous consequences as I miscalculated the current completely and only realized it when we were being swept between his hulls. Fortunately we were able to pull ourselves back out but it was tense there for a while. We met them later on at the beach stand up. Nice folk.

This evening there was a cruisers gathering at the beach with byob and snacks where we got to meet a number of the other crews on the boats. Apparently the ranger staff organize there things regularly and they certainly seemed to be a hit. At least they were with us.

We have also heard from Sampatecho. They were in Nassau as of two days ago and on their way south. Hope to cross wakes but I sure hope they tucked in somewhere secure for last night.