“The sea is a desert of waves, A wilderness of water.” ― Langston Hughes, Selected Poems After our arrival into Spanish Wells we hurried in before the sun went down to get our first glimpse of the town and head up the hill to Buddha’s for a beer. We were able to snag our first Sands Beer here. The Bahamian Brewery which makes Sands beer was flooded during Hurricane Dorian and will not be open again until August. Sadly, we prefer Sands to Kalik, brewed at Commonwealth Brewery Limited, but beggars can not be choosers. Buddha’s introduced us to Virginia our bartender who was born and raised in Spanish Wells and we got some local info about the island. More exploring to come we needed to get back on the boat before sunset and ready for the next day. We enjoyed getting a glimpse of the Atlantic and the beautiful beach looking out towards the Devil’s Backbone. Here is some local information via Wikipedia about Spanish Wells. The island was used as a last stop for Spanish ships returning to Europe. ships refilled their water supply from wells thus the English name of the settlement: Spanish Wells. The first British colonists were the Eleutheran adventurers from Bermuda (intending to be some of the first settlers of Eleuthera), who suffered a shipwreck on the reef, known as the "Devil's Backbone" in 1647. After living in a cave known as "Preacher's Cave", they ended up at Spanish Wells. Among other, later, groups of settlers were Crown loyalists, who left the United States after the American Revolutionary War. After groceries, we began actually exploring the little island that started with a walk a long the dock wall. I had asked a question earlier about all the cars on this little island and what happened to them once they broke down because we saw quite a few that looked to be on their last leg. Well It appears that they head out to see to be dumped and create the next reef for fish. Next, we saw an interesting way to pull boats out of the water. A bridge that is the road actually has to be removed for boats to be hauled up a track to be pulled out and worked on in the yard. Looked like it would be quite a job to just get a one boat out of the water in Spanish Wells. We had to pause our exploration for some weather so we headed over to Meeks Patch for protection but made our way back to have one last visit to Spanish Wells before leaving. On our last visit into Spanish Wells we found the school and the cemetery with the name Pinder which is also the name of the main road, the small grocery store, etc, etc. While in the Pinder grocery store we met the owner and of course his name is Mr. Pinder, and he enjoyed telling us about his travels around the world and his project to document every house on the island. All of this reminded me to look up the Pinder name. Lots of stories about the Pinders from two Pinders settling here and marrying each other to well stories that something strange might be in the air around Spanish Wells. Either way these are super nice people with a beautiful little island that we enjoyed but it is time for us to move further south. As I said before We just left Spanish Wells after stopping for fuel at St. George Power Plant on Russell Island, and quite a few boats are out here this morning, and it looks like we are all headed down to Current Cut. We have heard it is to be very respected and after Fleming Cut was so rough we are a little concerned. We are about 6 miles from Current Cut and the water is smooth and clear. We made it to Current Cut just at slack tide like we had hoped. Everything we read and heard about this cut was a little scary and looking at how narrow the cut is that connects two big bodies of water it was a little intimidating, but our ride through the cut was smooth and fine with a little help from the current. We did not have any issues with Current Cut and as we mentioned before we would recommend over using Fleming Cut. We are now headed through Eleuthrea Bay down to Hatchett Bay for our next adventure and once again to ride out some more weather. The winds love to blow in the Bahamas and we had no idea how much weather we would be hiding from but the rewards are great!
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