Spanish Wells
16 May 2015
Cathy
Our goal this season was to make it a far east as Eleuthera. Mission accomplished! 2 ½ week delay with the boat not being ready as promised. Covering a lot of ground or in this case water in short order. No time to see anything more than the northern tip but happy to have made it this far. It will make it much easier to go with the current up to Abaco.
Needing fuel and wanting to see the town we headed to Spanish Wells. The entry is shallow and arriving at low tide I watched from the bow of the boat to help avoid any sand shoal that might block our entry. Easy peasy. The charts are great for warning of potential problems but sometimes hard to understand until you get a visual and can tell what they mean by head to these poles NOT these poles further to the east or you’ll go aground. You have to have the visual to know WHICH poles are the ones furthest to the east. Hailed the fuel dock on channel 16 as we were coming in the channel. Told us right where to tie up and were waiting for me to throw them the lines. Greeting us with a smile and a welcome to their clean little town. How welcoming is that? Wanting to walk around and see the town we asked if we needed to move the boat after fueling. He smiled and said take your time. I am loving this place already. We carried our portable radio just in case though.
This clean little fishing village was absolutely charming, there was a garbage can on every corner to keep it this clean. They weren’t kidding whey say welcome to our clean little town. Of course walking makes you thirsty and Budda’s bar was quaint and inviting. The front was a liquor store with a bus on one side for food and a bus on the other for storage and a bar in the back. We pulled up a stool at the bar, if you want to know about a town…talk to the bartender. He told us how he moved here just out of high school from Nassau to live with his aunt. What a safe community it was especially after growing up in Nassau where he said you never left your neighborhood after dark. It confirmed what we had heard about Nassau and he’s talking 22 years ago and it has only gotten worse. Here kids go out to play in the morning and the only requirement is to be back by dark. Wow this is how we were raised, free to roam safely. If you did anything your parents would hear about it too. How times have changed. He told us how the new VAT “value added tax” was hurting the islands. He told us how alcohol only became legal 3 years ago and the politics surrounding it. Now there are 3 places on the island selling alcohol with still just the 1 liquor store out front. Imagine how we just happened to stumble upon it, lucky us. Reminds me a bit of Man-O-War in Abaco where liquor is still not sold. Alburys own everything in Man-O-War, here it’s the Pinders. Even walking by the cemetery you see so many Pinder family headstones. Something about cemeteries and churches I find fascinating in the islands.
We knew it was time to walk back to the dock and head back out. The tide was rising and we could get back out without any issues and didn’t want them to be getting antsy pants for us sitting on their fuel dock for so long. No worries there, when we got back they were happy that we took so long and walked around and saw so much. Time to go the 1 ½ nautical miles to Meeks Patch to anchor on the west side of the island to sit out the easterly winds and check it out.