Our original plan after arriving at the northern end of Eleuthera was to spend the night and then get up the next morning to head further south and find an anchorage to stay at to ride out the coming wind storm. However when we woke up the wind was already stronger than it should be and neither of us were too excited about spending a week on the boat just sitting around riding the waves and wind. After studying the charts for a while we decided to head into the town of Spanish Wells. We lucked into a spot on an actual dock that’s only a tad more expensive than a mooring ball and it has wifi! 🙂 So shore access is super easy and we can go for walks. Apparently Spanish Wells is the main hub for the fleet of lobster fishing boats, so it’s one of the wealthier towns in the Bahamas. All of the houses are pretty nice, there are multiple restaurants, and a huge well-stocked grocery store! I don’t think I’ll mind hanging out here for a week!
We explored the islands at Meek’s Patch before coming into town.
The water here is bathtub clear and exactly what I’ve been waiting for! Gorgeous! We did some snorkeling and laying around on the boat. We even went to a beach with pigs. Not the famous pig beach, another one just for tourists. I’m actually scared of pigs (they’re big and they bite!) so we cruised by on the dinghy and then left!
The entrance to Spanish Wells is a narrow channel that splits into two directions with docks along one edge. It will be a very protected area to hang out in!
We went to Buddha’s for an ultra late lunch and Jason finally got his hamburger!
I mentioned that the grocery store was huge…. and for this area it is! All of the stores we’ve found so far have had a few shelves of goods and a few freezers. Enough to top up on supplies, but not a wide selection. This grocery store was very well stocked and “normal” sized.
They had an entire shelf with locally made baked goods for sale, including bread, jam, cookies, cakes, rolls….
I’m glad we stocked up on food in Florida. Some of the stuff here is only a little more expensive than home… basics, fresh veggies, etc. Other stuff like cookie, chips, pop tarts, junk food etc is hilariously overpriced. A box of Oreos are $8. A can of pringles are $3. Cereal is $5-$8 a box. And, sad for me, their coffee selection was depressing…
It’s all good though.. I’m well stocked on coffee! 😉 We provisioned the boat based on how many of each thing we thought we would eat per week. However we estimated this without knowing how we would eat on the boat, what we would want, or what would be available. We brought so many cans of beans and I definitely overbought salsa. Next year we’re going to bring more frozen vegetables and cans of fruit!