{"id":1837,"date":"2013-04-03T18:31:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T18:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2013-04-03T18:37:01","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T18:37:01","slug":"the-lion-still-roars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/?p=1837","title":{"rendered":"The Lion Still Roars"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re three days into April and there is no sign yet of gentle spring weather down here.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s going to get a lot worse before there is any hope of calm seas and light breezes\u2026<\/p>\n

We spent Easter weekend in the Exuma Land and Sea Park at Warderick Wells.\u00a0 It is a land and sea life refuge so it is teeming with lots of sea life on beautiful coral reefs, beaches full of beautiful shells, banana twits that are so tame they will land on your hand, just to name a few what constitutes abundant life down here!\u00a0 There are lots of trails to walk which change from fine sugar sand to the strange, lava-like limestone that looks and feels more like walking on rusted iron. \u00a0\u00a0The limestone islands of the Exuma cays have been created through a build-up of calcium carbonate from the rise and fall of sea levels, along with wind and rain. \u00a0Over thousand of years these conditions have eroded the limestone into pits that can be quite large and deep.<\/p>\n

The park ranger Andrew and his partner Jennifer hosted a wonderful Easter dinner at midday on Sunday, and one of the visiting boaters held a sunrise service on Booboo Hill, the highest place on the island.\u00a0 It is not a high summit, but the walk still has its challenges due to the nature of the limestone crags.<\/p>\n

About 40 people went to the Easter dinner held in the park ranger\u2019s lovely house that has stunning views of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Bahamas Bank.<\/p>\n

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There are other islands in the Exuma Park, and on Monday we sailed north to Shroud Cay where I have now seen my first Tropical Long Birds!\u00a0 They are stunning!\u00a0 I hurled myself all over a bouncing Pandora<\/em> to try to capture them on film!\u00a0 They make a wonderful squeaking call that I have enjoyed hearing!\u00a0 In fact, I tend to hear them before I can see them!<\/p>\n

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Shroud Cay is known for its mangrove swamps, and at high tide we took the dink through the maze of mangroves and eventually made it out to the ocean side of the island where we walked along a 2 mile deserted beach. \u00a0This is the stuff of daydreams…<\/p>\n

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But back to the weather\u2026 weather is the defining force of our trip down here.\u00a0 According to more seasoned sailors who have spent many winters down here, this has been the most challenging winter in about a decade.\u00a0 There are almost no harbors that offer 360-degree protection in quickly changing weather, so each day sailors must gather what information they can and try to pick a destination that offers the most protection.\u00a0 There is a big storm coming Friday that will give us sustained winds of 50 knots with gusts going to around 70 knots.\u00a0 Yikes!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got our plan in place and hopefully we\u2019ll be snug and safe in Highbourne Cay.\u00a0 The frosting on the cake (for me) is that there is an excellent restaurant<\/a> there, so at least I\u2019ll be dining in style during the blow.<\/p>\n

There is internet at Highborne, so I\u2019m looking forward to catching up on blogs I love to visit and checking on what friends are posting on Facebook, and making phone calls!\u00a0 And I will make my travel plans for heading home\u2026.37 days to go!<\/p>\n

You can track our location here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re three days into April and there is no sign yet of gentle spring weather down here.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s going to get a lot worse before there is any hope of calm seas and light breezes\u2026 We spent Easter weekend in the Exuma Land and Sea Park at Warderick Wells.\u00a0 It is a land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sailing","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1846,"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/1846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.argoknot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}