It’s been a long (some might say too long) stretch here at the marina in Spanish Wells. Our alternator was still giving us trouble as we made our way up through the Exumas, so when we landed here to wait out the front (finally settling down today!), we opted for shore power and refrigeration over neither. Our solar panel can almost keep up, but the fear of not enough sun (it’s actually been cloudier at times than we’ve ever known the Bahamas to be), and the reality of having no ‘discretionary spending’ on the amperage front on the hook made up our minds for us.
So. We sit in Spanish Wells, with a plan to head out to anchor this afternoon, prepping for an early morning departure on the crossing back up to the Abacos. (Charging everything we can while we can!)
The week has been easy and relaxed, if not a bit bland for our cruising tastes. The island is only about 2 miles by ½ a mile, so it’s relatively easy to get to know the place. On a run one recent morning serious bikers-for-exercise (not to be confused with my biking style of huffing like a hippo with emphysema, just trying to get from Point A to Point B-biking is not my jam) passed me three times in thirty minutes; poor things are on a short track.
The island’s commerce is largely dependent on fishing, and the huge and ungainly (but always beautifully-painted) fishing boats line the shorefront to the south. (There is a channel between Spanish Wells and Russell Island to its south that makes for a very protected waterway.) Each boat has anywhere between two and five smaller center consoles rafted to it, and at first we thought it was just the sharing of dockage for lack of other options. It turns out, they’re part of the process: every morning, save for Sunday, the large ‘mother ships’ steam out of the harbor, with their ‘littles’ running alongside. It’s certainly a large operation in terms of crew members needed. The larger boats becoming the ‘processing hub’ for the smaller pangas, who dart closer to the reef systems and whose operators then dive to fish for lobster, grouper, and whatever else edible they find. We’ve only seen one major processing business here, so my guess is that they all then sell to that company. (Which, I just read on their website, is the primary supplier of Red Lobster. Ironically, I might add- nothing red about any state of these lobsters!) As I think I’ve mentioned before, there aren’t too many surnames here on the island, and if you’re a Pinder, you’ve pretty much got your hand in every pot, including the seafood export business.
Our family’s commercial shoreside interests are mainly in the ice cream trade, and we have been thrilled to be just off the same street as Papa’s Scoops, a semi-permanent tent structure that opens between 7 and 10 every night with homemade ice cream and slushie flavors.
The Food Fair, All Mart 4 (never did find All Marts 1 through 3, but #4 was the size of our living room, so if they’d been expanding through their iterations, I can assume that All Mart 1 was a closet in someone’s house), the liquor store, the ice cream tent, the guy with a propane tank in his yard for filling, friendly goats on 16th street to feed leftovers to… all became important stops on our land journeys.
I’m not sure this is the right word, but the ‘highlights’ so far have been simple. We rented a golf cart one day and did a quick circumnavigation after tooling around Russell Island to find a delicious lunch spot. We walked to a woman’s garage yesterday where it turns out she runs quite the operation feeding the locals lunch every day. She was turning conch fritters in a little fryolater on a card table, and her husband was whipping up sandwiches on Johnny cakes and conch salad in their kitchen. We vaguely thought about FDA regulations of the US while we forked over very few dollars for a very lot of food in her garage filled with too many unorganized things to name, including a low enclosure of just-hatched chicks under a lamp.
A large, dead snake in the road near the marina has been a serious point of entertainment for a few days, and we just added that to the tally of other flat things we’ve seen: four more snakes (smaller, for Andy’s sake), and one rat, larger than we would have liked to imagine island rats to be. (But at least also dead-er.)
Our biggest move was a day trip to Harbour Island with some marina neighbors who hadn’t been before, and who were kind enough to organize the ferry from here to Eleuthera, the taxi across the north end, and the secondary ferry across. We ate delicious pastries, walked the island, adopted a couple of potcakes for the short term, and looked longingly at the anchorage there that we love.
The marina has a pool, which is where we’ve ended most days; a nice dip and quiet reading time after school work and before dinner (and ahem, ice cream). We also luxuriate in laundry facilities as well as great showers, so while we feel like we’ve stepped out of the joys of cruising for a moment, we’re cleeeaaan!!
Off to a relaxing Saturday of hoisting Andy aloft, now that the winds have died down. That’s a joke, since there isn’t an electric winch to be found on this boat, and I’ve yet to eat my Wheaties. (Which we also don’t have.) But! Anenometer assessment, windvane tightening, and a general rig check is always good.
Happy weekend!
