Warderick Wells

I can't think of any better place to get cornered by the weather than Warderick Wells in the Exuma Land and Sea Park.  We were only planning on spending a couple of days on the anchor here but ended up picking up a mooring and staying for six days due to a strong front that was moving through.  This turned out to be great as it afforded us time to explore the miles of hiking trails and get to know the resident Hutias (see Wren's blog for more on these rare animals). 

Going Hutia hunting at dusk

Park headquarters

Hutia!

Sperm whale skeleton

Birthday message for Grandma

Curly tail lizard

Nurse shark looking for a handout

Our time at Warderick also gave us time to fix the dinghy (or so we thought), as you may have seen in the "Ode to Rachel"  blog. 

Well, it turns out that toluene based glues have a very short shelf life.  The patch kit we brought along, as well as one that was donated to our cause by a generous neighboring boat named Flight, were well past their prime.  We pressed on regardless, applying glue with the consistency of Fart Putty (you know what this is if you spend any time with children), instead of the honey-like consistency it should have.  The dinghy held air just long enough to get our hopes up, but was as limp an inflatable lawn Santa come morning.  We'd have to wait until Nassau to get fresh glue.  Not only was there no fishing in Exuma Park, there was also no shopping of any kind.

Glue wasn't the only thing on our shopping list.  We'd now been more than a week longer than anticipated, and we had no fish to fall back on.  Now, mind you, we'd been eating well.  Really well.  Like kings in fact.  So when I say we were running low on food,  we were by no means about to starve to death.  Our larder just lacked many items we're accustomed to; fresh fruit, veggies, dairy, etc.   All we had left was a rather random assortment of canned and dry goods -the pieces of a culinary puzzle, if you will- that somehow needed to be united to form 6 days worth of meals.

When the girls started to grouse about the offerings, "Really mom, sardines and rice??",   Scott had a brilliant idea.  He put them in charge of taking an inventory of our stores, and designing a menu to utilize what we had.  They jumped on this immediately.  Suddenly the famine of 2014 turned into a fun and challenging game.  They perused the Boat Galley Cookbook (we love this cookbook, thank you Jana!) to try and find interesting recipes for what we had.  The "substitutions" chapter played a key role.   The only thing in there we actually had all the ingredients for was 3-bean salad.  Still, they came up with a great meal plan for the week.  They counted everything and rationed it accordingly.  One day during a hike, Wren pulled a sleeve of Ritz crackers out of the backpack and said, "Okay, there are 30 crackers here, we each get 7 1/2".  

They quickly learned that baking soda and vinegar can be substituted for an egg when baking.   It is possible to enjoy bean burritos without cheese, sour cream, or guacamole.  Hunt's canned spaghetti sauce tastes like soap (really). Rice can be eaten for breakfast with raisins and brown sugar.  And dry milk is just plain gross, no matter what.   They also learned just how lucky they are to have so much, even when it appears to be so little.

Rationing the hardtack

Nassau bound!