January 30, 2009 “CHANGE IS IN THE WIND”

PICS
• Curly-tailed Lizard
• Bananaquits aka “those little sugar junkies” begging from Nancy
• Bananaquit eating breakfast with us
• Exuma Park, Summer Breeze is in the middle
January 30, 2009 “CHANGE IS IN THE WIND”

We’ve had three beautiful days here on Warderick Wells, the headquarters island of the Exuma Land & Sea Park. The hiking has been great, and we’ve put a pretty good dent in the total 10-mile trail system already. Warderick Wells Cay is only a couple of miles long and a quarter-mile at its widest. There are dozens of little beaches both on the Banks side (west) and on the Exuma Sound side (east). The rest of the coast is typical black limestone, or “iron rock” . . . really tough, watch-each-footfall, hiking.

Nancy actually saw a “hutia” the first day. That’s the only native mammal in the Exumas, once thought to be extinct. It’s a rabbit-looking fur ball about the size of a softball. I’ve yet to see one, but their cute little poop pellets are so prolific, we originally thought they were seeds off the trees. The most abundant widelife are the “curly-tailed lizards” and the “bananaquits”. We were eating breakfast the other day and I almost stepped on a bananaquit under the table in the cabin; he had flown in, unbeknownst to us, and was pecking up our crumbs off the floor. That used to really bug Abaco. We miss him.

It’s obviously time to pay our dues again; we’ve experienced several nice sunny days but that’s about to end. A strong coldfront is now passing over coastal Florida and will hit us tonight, Friday evening. Then right behind it, following 2 days of nasty nonstop blowing, a second even stronger coldfront will be hitting us Tuesday. Wish you guys could keep your winter weather to yourself, we’ve trying to play down here! Betsy asked a great question about just what exactly did a “norther” mean? Well, sometimes with irritating frequency, those big artic snowstorm bands, that sweep down from Canada like a pendulum from the west coast of the US to the east coast, actually dip down far enough south to freeze parts of Florida and create miserable marine conditions in the Bahamas. When I say miserable, I’m only talking temperature drops from the normal high 70’s into the high 40’s. But with winds approaching 35-45 miles per hour, that means pull out the goosedown sleeping bags on a sailboat. And when the winds start building to over 25 knots in an anchorage, boat anchors tend to start dragging, and things can get ugly really fast. Everybody is catnapping in their main cabin rather than going to bed nights. And the coldfronts often last 2-3 nights. Sailing is not always glamorous, nor fun, and we’ve got two back-to-back northers headed at us right now.