Spanish Wells and away

We headed in to Spanish Wells in the stealth dinghy fairly early Wednesday morning.  The bakery is open Monday through Friday – except this Wednesday.  Then we stopped at the bank to learn about international banking and costs for cash.  Next was a trip through Food Fair where we cruised the entire store, a nice one, but only bought a $2 cantaloupe.

We met Jean at the museum.  We learned about crayfish (lobster) fishing, early settlers and the history of the area.  Spanish Wells was a subsistence farming and fishing community until 40 years ago or so.  The biggest changes here were caused by access to refrigeration on ships for transporting the catch to population centers, and electricity which arrived in dependable fashion while we were in high school.   The town is now thriving, industrious, clean and well maintained.   They have only had two significant hurricanes in recent years. The first one did quite a lot of damage, but they used that experience to improve the building codes. The next hurricane caused no structural damage! The surge was the only problem encountered. It lifted boats up off their pilings and washed them across to Charles Island where the shore was so soft they could dig out under and around the biggest boats and re-float them.  You can still see the notches left in the shoreline. They have installed taller pilings.

We have found Spanish Wells to be our favorite place we’ve visited. We so enjoyed Jean that we accepted the invitation for a Sundowner at their lovely home. She and Tom had many great suggestions for us.

Thursday was the weather day that we came here to sit out. We mostly read, slept, played cards and just relaxed. Friday was still windy, but we braved the wind and headed back to town to the bank. We ran into Dave and Trish from Miss Grace, one of the boats we followed from the Abacos. We agreed to meet them at Buddha’s for dinner that night.  It is always fun to spend time with new people, learn new things and eat good food.

 We left our mooring ball on Saturday to sail off to new adventures.  We had a wonderful sail and eventually had to furl in part of the genny as the breeze increased. When we reached Current Cut, the current was coming out at about six knots. That plus the wind caused us to anchor nearby and wait for the tidal current to slow down as time approached low tide. We ate lunch and hung out for awhile, checking tides and wind. Reggie decided that around 3pm we should check out the current again. It had lessened enough that we decided to go for it. No problems.  It would take us 3 hours to get to Hatchet sound and the wind was on the nose, so we motored. 

Alice Town adventures in the next post.