As our glorious month dockside in Spanish Wells, Eleuthera winds down, we’re looking for a weather window back to the U.S.  We will need to depart the Bahamas by the 2nd week of April or pay an additional $400.00 to extend our stay with Bahamian Immigration.  We’d like to avoid last year’s cost & trouble, especially when we ended up staying only a few days over.  We deal with it as their country – their rules.

Our slow, week-long 150-mile cruise from George Town up to Spanish Wells was great with nearly perfect weather the entire time. Lots of exploring with surprises from both the sky & sea.

While we’ve seen many SpaceX launches from varying distances, this was our 1st SpaceX booster landing (& the 2nd one in Bahamian waters). We were only 20-miles away (circled to the left) with the AIS signals of the landing & support vessels circled to the right. Unfortunately, that big cloud bank & a bit of land was in the way, and that bright fire was the booster’s final decent onto the landing vessel.  Even though we were warned, a very loud sonic boom almost made us fall from the cabin top!

From the deep sea (o.k. – only 6′) a little squid must have landed on our stern overnight & “let go”. While the ink doesn’t wash off, the sun bleaches it away in a few days.

Speaking of creatures of the sea …

This creature stumped all of us, including a local Bahamian, as it “swam” past our dock. At first glance it looked like a 10″ piece of seaweed, and then we saw deliberate, slow movements. Google Lens to the rescue, that immediately identified this picture as a “spotted sea hare”, a species of large sea slug (aka an opisthobranch gastropod mollusk). They share one characteristic with squids, as they release an ink/irritant to scare away predators.

Spanish Wells is an ideal place to host visitors. Our nephew, Matt (blue shirt) flew in for his 2nd visit. This is the Spanish Wells ferry “terminal” with a row of “cars” (aka buggies) awaiting.

Getting right into it with a great lunch at “The Sandbar” restaurant.

Matt is a fun, easy guest & is always on the move, paddleboarding, exploring Russell Island & St. Georges Cay (Spanish Wells) in the buggy and he even kayaked around the entire island -St. George’s Cay.

Kids think they know everything … Prior to coming, Matt showed his boss in CT our boat sitting at “our” dock on Google Streetview. What?? Yep, Google Streetview has even covered the Bahamas & this is us from last year. Someone performing the “Bahamas Mapping Project” strapped one of their fancy 360-degree cameras to the top of a golf cart & drove up & down each street.

A Bahamian “phone book” listing of car rentals on the Eleuthera mainland. In the background is their ferry scheduling.

This is a somewhat typical Bahamian car rental office on the family islands – a few older cars in someone’s front yard. Surprising though, ours was a 5-year-old luxury SUV in perfect condition. We’ve been told that with Japan’s strict environmental regulations, inspection costs & disposal fees, it’s cheaper to export cars for cheap than to keep them in Japan.  For countries with right-hand drive & with regulations which allow it, there’s a steady supply of cars (although the shipping from Japan is quite expensive). Of course, the dash controls & talking voices are in Japanese!

Nearly every tourist traveling to North Eleuthera visits Preacher’s Cave. In 1648, 2 small ships of Eleutheran Adventurers were shipwrecked off this rugged coast (“Devil’s Backbone”) in stormy seas. Lucky for them there was this unusually large cave right by the beach which became their home for several years. Our first visit here was in March of 2014 with several photos of the interior: Our first time to Preacher’s Cave

Eleuthera (and the entire Bahamas) is full of “complicated” stories. In 1937 a U.S. millionaire who fell in love with Eleuthera (building a small development) wanted to help the island with fresh dairy & basic foods so he spent much of his fortune building a 2,400-acre farm to supply the entire Bahamas with dairy, poultry & some meats. As part of his farm, he built dozens of these large concrete silos to store grains, along with the entire infrastructure of wells for water, docks & ships for transport, etc. The Prime Minister at the time called his farm “the greatest success story in the history of Bahamian agriculture”.  A few years later the same Prime Minister decided that foreigners were making too much money from farming (ha!) so the government took it over & promptly ran it into the ground. The hundreds of Bahamians who were making high wages (for farm work in these times), building homes, churches & an entire community, were devastated.  To this day, 95% of all dairy & poultry is imported.  A website Project Eleuthera.org has this & many fascinating stories of Eleuthera’s history over the years – including a (true) pirate story! Forget Pirates of the Caribbean – between 1690 – 1720 the Bahamas was pirate central with Nassau as its heart. A brief history is Pirates of the Bahamas

Eleuthera and many other Bahamian islands have “blue holes” – random nearly round holes in the limestone 16′ – 663′ deep. We toured the northern half of Eleuthera over the Glass Window (a single-lane bridge at a narrow 50′ wide portion of the island where you can view the deep blue of the ocean to one side & the light blue of the sound on the other). Matt also got a kick out of exploring an abandoned U. S. Naval base (1950 – 1980) which was at the forefront of underwater sound detection technology to track Soviet submarines. Later they developed missile tracking systems & other early defense technologies (also covered in the Project Eleuthera website above). Remnants of many of the buildings & structures remain, slowly being taken over by nature.

One of our best Bahamian lunches was in Gregory Town at a roadside restaurant just south of the Glass Window called Daddy Joe’s with fantastic food & service.

Always boat projects – one of our nearly new helm chairs became very wobbly. Surgically dissecting the vinyl & foam found the metal frame had failed, as had barely been tack welded together. Fortunately, Spanish Wells has someone who knows someone who can perform almost any task, so now properly welded & re-assembled – better than new.

More good stuff was: surprise arrival of PDQ friends to the dock next to us; enough lunches out- Budda’s where Lori always ordered her “usual”- BLT with a side of Bahamian Mac N Cheese (it’s sooo good) & a Margarita no salt; lunch & Matt’s farewell dinner at The Shipyard where their delicious Lobster Mac N Cheese easily provides leftovers; plenty of walking opportunities- especially to the Food Fair and Artisan/Farm Market; visits to Valu Liquors where we always love to chat with Ginger; and finally – plenty of beadwork time for Lori and yes Russ got a jump on his summer projects!!

Next week is holding out to be a good window for our 3-day bounce back across to Florida. Our lists for going back seem to be just as long as leaving. including U.S. Customs entry, booking a marina for 2 nights, a rental car for our many errands, including bringing stuff to & from our self-storage unit in Vero Beach.

While spending nearly 4 months in the Bahamas is great, getting back will be nice too. We’ll make this a quick, several days layover & then begin our trek north.