Sailing Adventures On Sanctuary: Warderick Wells

Our new favorite place in the Exumas. This place has it all. Ruins with a mysterious past, snorkeling of world class proportions, trails everywhere and of course, the famous BooBoo Hill. The headquarters for the park is located here and the staff is an extremely knowledgeable and nice group of young folks from the US. There are several smaller islands (just like everywhere else) near the bigger islands that also have trails and great snorkeling. Another spot where we could have spent a lot more time.

This is from our Bahama mentors boat. Thanks for all the great advice and information!

We spent a lot of time looking at the work of other sailors to create a unique memento of their boat and trip to Warderick Wells.

We found the piece of driftwood on Shroud Cay and David chain drilled it then gouged out the letters. The date 1-4-13 is on the back. Happy Birthday Andy!

This is one deep hole. There are many of them all over the island but this was the only one somebody had bothered to make a ladder to explore the depths.

One of the rocky beaches along the east side. There were also several nice sand beaches.

He didn't think I would post this one with the googly eyes.

We are on a trail bisecting the island just north of the ranger station. The marshes shallow out at low tide.

We kept looking for a group of knights who say "Nee" with this one. It seemed worthy of a Monty Python skit.

The building on the left is the headquarters and the building on the right is the Bahamian Defense Force.

An honest to goodness pirate's lair. This area has a shallow fresh water pool and is screened from the nearby beach so it was heavily used by pirates preying on Spanish treasure ships. If the rocks could talk I bet there would be some hair raising stories.

The walls runs from beach to beach across the entire island. There is another one that parallels this one. The wall was built by Loyalists after they escaped during the American Revolutionary War. It stands about 3.5 feet high and you can see that it's thick and took a tremendous amount of effort. We're not sure what they were trying to keep out or maybe keep in. The sinkholes are too numerous between the two to try herding animals. Even for the poorest person from the states, this was not a step up in places to live.

Some of the ruins of the houses. The walls were mostly stacked rock. With a lack of timber, I'm guessing the roofs were palm branches.

This was part of the mooring field directly in front of the park headquarters. The wind really howled but we were protected. The moorings made us feel more secure and not have to worry about our anchor dragging.