A Windy Week in Warderick Wells without Wi-Fi

Trekker moored in Warderick Wells

It amazes me how much our life is centered around the wonderful World Wide Web. Down in the Bahamas, you are lucky if the marina you are in has good Wi-Fi. Most have it, but the chances of it reaching your boat is slim. So, in our wisdom, we bought a BTC (Bahamas Telephone Co.) SIM card and put it in my phone. So we now have a Bahamas phone number, with a thousand minutes of talk, 30 GB of data and text for $30 for 15 days.  It works pretty well, when you have a signal. But, when you are being chased by a big system that is going to blow for days on end, and you decide to go to one of your favorite places, Warderick Wells, to sit on a nice safe mooring ball, but with NO cell service, life becomes different.

Our usual routine in the morning, is to check our phones, including emails, news, Facebook, Instagram and of course weather. Weather is huge when you are cruising. It dictates what you are going to do that day, or where you are going, or if you are staying where you are. Basically our life revolves around the weather when living on Trekker. So last week, while enjoying ourselves with our friends Sue and Randy, in a nice safe marina on Cape Eleuthera, we noticed that the weather was predicted to be very windy for the next week, so we decided to sail across to the Exumas and get a mooring ball to wait it out.

Exuma Sound before the blow

Exuma Sound during the blow

So here we sit, Monday March 9, 2020, day five, so far, on a mooring ball, and day three of a huge blow, with winds clocking up to 35 knots. The sound of the wind is endless, and at night the best way to sleep is with earplugs to dull the noise.  We haven’t been to shore much, because the wind is so fierce that you can be guaranteed a nice salty spray as you dinghy to shore, or walk around the island. Plus there is not much to do here when it is blowing. There are no stores, food markets, laundry or restaurants other than the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park office, which sells t-shirts. You get the picture. When it’s nice there is amazing snorkeling, hiking, and beaches.

But the worst part is how difficult it is to check weather, get emails, or know what is going on at home with our family and friends, or in the world. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, ignorance is bliss, but not knowing what the weather is going to do and when this blow will stop, is frustrating.  If we are lucky we do have access to some cell service. If you go to the fire hydrant by the park office, cross your eyes, hold your breath, and point south, MAYBE you will get one or two bars.  Or, you can walk up to the highest spot of the island, BooBoo Hill, and maybe you will get a bar or two there. But it’s always a maybe, and often a no.

So what are we doing while we wait to move again? Hugh and I are having a fierce tournament of Bananagrams, with Hugh winning 4-1 so far. Cribbage and Rummycube are played a lot. I am doing some baking; muffins, brownies, and gourmet meals (sort of), knitting and of course we are reading a lot.

Every Saturday night the Park office hosts a happy hour for all the boats in the anchorage, and despite the wind that night everyone gathered on the beach to exchange stories on their travels and survival of the weather.  It’s always enjoyable to meet fellow sailors and compare notes. We also get to visit with the Park Administrator, Cherry, who has been here since the first time we came to visit in 2018. She works three weeks straight, living in a small house built for the staff on the island, and then has a week off. She really is the soul of the anchorage, and everyone knows Cherry.

Cherry and Karen

We had our last Happy Hour on the beach Tuesday night (self organized) with the remaining boats, as it seemed that everyone was leaving Wednesday morning. The winds were getting slightly calmer, (only gusting into the low 20s) and we were all ready to move on! We had a brisk sail up the Exumas to Highbourne Cay, where we were surprised to see only three other boats when we arrived. But as the day wore on, it filled in until there were at least twenty boats anchored by sundown. It seems we weren’t the only ones ready to move.

Yesterday we had another great sail up to Nassau, where we will stay for two nights to get some food and do some laundry. Two nights is more than enough as it is a busy, noisy wavy place.

So now that the winds have blown themselves out, and the forecast is for a lovely week ahead, we will start heading back to Titusville in Florida, to get ready for our journey home. The good news is we have confirmed a ride for our mast with US Spars, and so we will be taking it down and getting it ready to travel to Buffalo, where we will put it back up for the final leg home along the Great Lakes. So once the mast is down, we will become a trawler, I am calling us the Ditch Witch (the nickname for the ICW being the ditch), and our aim is to enjoy the many small towns and harbours along the eastern coast of the States. With no bridges to worry about, we hope it will be less stressful than the trip down, although we still have to watch our depth in some marshy areas. We’ll try to travel on mid-tide rising so if we do get stuck we can eventually float off. It’s always something!

So stay tuned for our further adventures as “Trekker Travels Home” … one day at a time.