exuma cays land and sea park - shroud cay

At Shroud Cay

​After a couple of days at Normans Cay, we headed south to Shroud Cay in the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park.  The park was established by the Bahamas National Trust in 1958 and is a no take zone and marine protected area.  Except for private inholdings (much like the Adirondack Park), the park is pristine and undeveloped.
 
We stopped at a beautiful anchorage near the north end of Shroud Cay, just across from the entrance to the mangrove-lined creek that crosses the island to Exuma Sound.  Once the anchor was set Brian, Eoin, and Isla dove the anchor and found it deeply buried in the sand. Confident the boat would stay put while we were gone, we launched the dinghy to check out the creek that led to the ocean side.  Even though the tide wasn’t optimal, we made it across without touching the bottom.  After winding through mangroves in clear water, we rounded the last turn and beheld perhaps the most beautiful view we’d ever seen.  The tide was quickly falling and we didn’t have much time, so headed back after a brief visit.  Fortunately, we only had to get out and push the dinghy once!
 
The next day after school we packed snacks, books, masks and snorkels, and towels.  With the rising tide this time, we headed back to the mangrove creek and across the island.  Unlike the day before, there was no one at the beach and we had it to ourselves all afternoon.  We had snacks on the beach, swam and floated, walked up to the top of the island to take in the views, and played in the sand.  It was an idyllic afternoon.  We returned to Counting Stars to watch the sunset and make dinner. 

---

It wasn’t all sun, sand, and surf while we were at Shroud Cay – there was also baking, schoolwork, and boatwork. Brian finished the solar panel installation that he’d started back in Deltaville.  He installed and wired three large solar panels (the boat already had four small ones), but ran out of time to run the wires through the boat and connect them to the battery system before we left.  The last step was to figure out the best path for the wires to go halfway the length of the boat from the panels to the battery charger.  This involves taking cabinets out of the walls, removing pieces of the ceiling, sometimes drilling multiple tiny holes to find the way through a fiberglass wall, and taking lots of things out of storage spaces to access wire runs behind and beneath them.  It is quite a process!  But by the time we left Shroud Cay for our next stop, the wires were run and ready to be connected.  Maybe next time another project like that comes around we'll actually take some photos of the boat all taken apart!  Usually we just want to get it put back together as quickly as possible!