History and people of Spanish Wells Lindsay McRory May 21, 1996 It was tough finding the ambition to leave Royal Island. The daily routine of island exploring, snorkeling, and boogie board rides behind the dinghy was hard to break. After a week, we motored the leisurely 12 miles to Spanish Wells, where we are currently moored. Spanish Wells is a small community of a few hundred people, a very hard-working population of fishermen and other seafaring businesses. They are very proud of their independence; they have their own power plant and run their own market. Most of the population is Caucasian, which is unusual. They speak with an accent that is quite a bit different from the other islands. At times it's quite difficult to understand them. Some residents claim to be direct descendants of the Eleutheran adventurers who shipwrecked here in 1648. Others are descendants of loyalists who sought refuge here after the U.S. war of independence. According to the guidebook, most of the residents grow up, marry, and remain here. Now read between the lines here: small initial population base, 200-plus years old, no one moves away. The gene pool is just a bit depleted. It's not immediately obvious, but after our first walk around the town we noticed quite a few people with serious deformities. It's really sad to see. The community is prosperous. Large, well-maintained homes, manicured lawns. The residents claim there is no crime here. Shopping is fairly good--two grocery stores and a few marine stores. As with Nassau, prices fluctuate widely. After paying $9 for a jug of milk and a loaf of bread, we were surprised that a lot of canned goods were considerably cheaper than the bulk stores in Florida. Although it's not a tourist town, the people have been very helpful and go out of their way to make sure that we're well taken care of while we're here. The sun left and it's been scattered showers for two days, hence the lack of pictures. After Kita completed her schoolwork we had fun trying to rig various rain-catching devices on deck to fill our tanks. We were only moderately successful. A furious downpour started last night around midnight. Denise and I got up to replenish our freshwater supply. By 2 a.m. we had topped up on the 120 gallons of water we were short, filled all the solar showers, and put another 12 gallons into jugs. Denise actually wanted to do a couple loads of laundry! The days pass quickly, even in the rain. Uncertainty looms over our hurricane season plans. We are slowly heading southeast, even though satellite coverage fluctuates from the best it's ever been to nothing at all. We were contemplating spending the whole hurricane season in Puerto Rico; now we're leaning toward scooting the Caribbean and hitting one of the ABC islands, Venezuela or Grenada. From Puerto Rico to Curaçao is only 350 nautical miles, which should take three days.