At first blush this place feels like home, or at least there is something so familiar about the place that I was comfortable immediately. I lived in Charlotte Amalie, USVI, for a year and a half while working as a musician in the early 70s. It had the same quaint vibe juxtaposed with pretensions of a resort destination. St. Thomas had just gotten their first Orange Julius chain and many people were up in arms. The roads had that ad hoc, just winging it quality and a huge disparity in wealth that causes problems everywhere.
As Bob Marley said, “They belly full but we hungry!”
St. Thomas made it. I don’t think they want this place to change, ever. Race relations were strained everywhere in the 70s so finding trouble in St. Thomas really wasn’t surprising. I’m not sure what’s happening here in Spanish Wells but after a day or two you start to notice a lot of white faces and the black ones are mostly Haitian workers that leave every night for Eleuthera on the little local water taxi. It’s a dry Protestant town and I guess I just don’t like one- company towns.
We’re heading over to Harbor Island on the ferry tomorrow, weather permitting, to see something more like the Bahamas.
There has been a tension in the harbor due to the threat of multiple fifty knot squall lines ripping through the area, which is why we’re sitting here on a mooring. All day you could see crew come out to strip something off their boat or lash something down or add another line or chafe gear. It just kind of builds until you go out and do something, too. Escape Velocity is always tidy on deck. We don’t have jerry cans of fuel and water lashed to the side decks like most cruising boats do. We mostly have to sausage wrap the jib and double up our mooring lines and we’re ready for the storm.
We had two thunderstorms go through this harbor early today so inbetween we were able to scrub EVs decks and get a fresh water rinse. We are the only American boat and apparently all the Canadian, Kiwi, and Newfoundland boats around us don’t share our need for clean decks.
Life is good.