We made it!  We left Lynyard Cay about 6:34 in the morning.  The weather was great, winds 7 to 8 knots but they were from the south, the direction we were going so we had to motor.  Tristan was up early with us, but of course Tessa always sleeps late on crossings.  Later that morning we started getting swells about 3 to 4 feet.  Tessa was up by then.   Tristan started feeling a little sick from the swells.  I found some motion sickness pills and gave him some.  Tessa was feeling a little sick too.  I tried to give her one of the pills, but when she tried to chew it up, she threw up all over the cushion in the cockpit.  I am not sure she was that seasick or it was the combination of upset stomach and bad tasting medicine.   It was going to be a long day. 

The swells lasted most of the day.  Tessa went back to sleep after getting sick and slept most of the rest of the way there.  Tristan took a good nap too. The water was an incredible dark blue.  It was very deep too.  Most of the time it was over 2 miles deep and in one area close to 3 miles deep!   As we got closer to Eleuthera the swells flattened out and we all felt better.  About an hour out from Spanish Wells the sea turned to glass.  We saw something floating on the water.  At first we thought it was dolphins but as we got closer we realized it was a pod of pilot whales!!  In calm seas pilot whales will rest at the surface, usually in big groups.  This pod had about 8 whales.  Tessa was over the moon!  She has been creating that she will see whales and now she finally has!!  They weren’t overly big, maybe about 10 to 12 feet and there were a couple of babies.  It was so exciting.  We circled back around to get a picture but by then they had dove below the water.  We hope we get to see them again. 

Most of the guidebooks suggest hiring a guide to take you through Devil’s Backbone and into Spanish Wells, if you have never done it before.  We thought that was a good idea because there are a lot of coral heads here.  Woody was our guide and he met us at Bridgepoint.  He was nice, but very quiet.  He didn’t slow down at all going over the coral heads and when I asked him what the depth was, he replied he had no idea as he didn’t know where our depth meter was!  This surprised me quite a bit as I would have thought he might want to check the depth as he is racing through the coral heads, so as to make sure he doesn’t rip a hole in our boat.  He doesn’t use a GPS; I guess he has done it enough he just knows where he’s going.  Anyway, a short time later he had us safely through and to our mooring ball.    

It was now after 4:00 and we decided to walk into town to do some exploring.  It was a bit of a shock compared to other island towns we have been to.  There are lots of cars.  Lots of pickup trucks with young boys driving through town, stereos blaring.  There are also a lot of fishing boats.  These are lobster fisherman and they work hard and make a lot of money.  It felt more like a small town in America than a Bahamian island.  While the boys were out driving the cars, the girls were working.  And another weird thing, a majority of the girls were blonde headed.  The island is a vast majority white, but all the blondes were a little strange.  According to the guide book, “The girls/women work in the town and processing plant while the men/boys are lobster fisherman.  And I do mean boys.  The guidebooks say that most boys leave school at the age of 14 to become lobster fisherman.  They make a good income too, over $40k for these young kids in a 4 week trip.  The kids generally remain on the island with the boys buying houses before they are married.  The marriage age for girls is between 15 and 19 but an unmarried 19 year old is considered an old maid.”  I don’t know how much of that is accurate but there was very much a “hurry up” feel to the town that we haven’t felt anywhere else.  Another thing, we came in on a Saturday afternoon and by 5:00, except for the restaurants, the town was pretty well rolled up.  They had an internet café place called “Teen Planet” and a movie house but that was closed too.  We were wondering where all the young people went on Saturday nights and then read the guide book and figured they were all married and at home.  It was very different.   The people were nice and helpful.

 We saw the high speed ferry come in and knew you could take it to Harbour Island for a reasonable rate.  When I asked the girl at the restaurant about it, what time it left the next day, what Harbour Island was like, she had no idea.  She had never been there.  Harbour Island is a 20 minute trip by ferry and neither she nor any of the other girls in the restaurant had ever been there.  I asked her where she went when she left the island and it was to Europe or the United States.  Very weird.