Spanish Wells - Pretty cottages and church fete

The next day was another significant sail, we were now feeling some pressure to make way north for our crossing to the States.  The sail to Spanish Wells was all in shallow water, if it was over 6 metres this was deep!  The winds were variable and Mark was busy adjusting our sails to keeps us moving, we attempted the spinnaker again when we had light winds but within an hour the winds were up and the spinnaker was down but we sailed most of the way to our navigational challenge.

The Current is a cut through 2 islands (one called Current Cay) which can have tides running up to 10 knots but in the last couple of miles approaching the cut there are various sandbanks which must be negotiated, the water seemed to be constantly changing colour and Magnum weaving between these colour changes, the water was 2.3 metres at time, we are 2.1 metres deep so we were very apprehensive. But we reached the Current successfully, position Magnum in the centre and were whisked through at 9 knots!

Whistling through the Cut, look at our wake!

Sandbank that we had just avoided

The remainder of the sail to Spanish Wells was not much less challenging, for around 5 miles we were able to sail as depths were 3-4 metres but the final couple of miles were heading into 18-20knot of wind over less than 3 metres of water, again down to 2.3 on several occasions.  Mark had worked out the tides but we had a arrived slightly early and we working off depths which were different on both our electronic and paper chart so were not very confident.  Just as we overcame the final hurdle of entering into the cut between Russell Island we heard on the radio that the ferry to Nassau was leaving and it headed straight toward us through the narrow channel – what fun, we were glad to be there!

The settlement is renowned for Lobster fishing which the export worldwide, the port was full of large fishing boats.

Huge lobster fishing boats

We were so thankful that the buoys which we had read about were still there in the harbour and there was one free and even better the water was over 3 metres, we tied up safely and radioed “Bandit”  - yes that was his name, to advise we were using a buoy.  This was really the only way we could visit Spanish Wells as the closest sheltered anchorage is miles away, just too far for us in our dingy

The view from our mooring, couldn't get much closer to the town

Almost looks like a toy boat

Spanish Wells is one of the original Loyalist settlements and many of the families remain on the island and there are lots of pretty cottages that date back to the 1800s.

What a view from your house

The people here were really friendly and it was a thriving little settlement, the main road was bustling with golf carts!  We had a really nice day just wandering around, Mark yet again found the bakers and today it was carrot cake J and we even popped along to the local church fete.

Nights we relaxing here, there was quite a lot of boat traffic heading back to the main island but they were all very considerate and there was little wake, we also saw some great sights, he is a car being transported and just in front of the boat you can see the fin of the dolphin which the boat was completely unaware of!

Car on boat and poor dolphin about to get run over!

Leaving Spanish Wells we decided to take the north east Ridley head passage which is part of the Devil Backbone and the pilot book will not even provide pilotage for this area and advises that you use a pilot, so after seeing 4 boats being piloted out the previous day we decided if we were going to take this route this is what we should do.  So at just before 7am, we were following Bandit out of the channel.  With the sun so low in the sky water visibility was very poor and it made it difficult to see the channel and immediately our chart plotter was not showing the channel where were we were motoring (normally it have been completely accurate) as we headed through the coral heads there was no sign of these on the plotter or the paper chart, so the pilot was definitely money well spent.

Pilot boat leading us out

Goodbye Spanish Wells

Still following Bandit