Turks & Caicos

How hard can it be to check into a country? Well apparently when you arrive on a Sunday and Monday is a holiday it can be very difficult. Sunday, following our early morning arrival, knowing we were too tired to do anything, but not quite ready to sleep we broke out the bottle of rum for a little celebration. Normally I would be concerned about us choosing a bit of rum at 9:00 am, but after 48 hours at sea and a random sleep schedule that didn’t take notice of day or night it seemed a good day for an exception. And besides our only plan for the day was to go to sleep. And we did just that, waking up briefly for a bit of dinner and back to sleep. Monday morning we dug our bicycles out of the forward locker where they have been stored for the voyage. I do mean dug, it seems our forward locker has accumulated quite a few items, most of which I believe are the various pieces for my sewing projects not yet finished, or started. We then loaded the bikes into the dingy and headed to shore in search of customs. This is the first time we had used our bikes since being in the States, the Bahamas islands being small enough to not need them, we were very glad to have them on this island. After being accustomed to everything being within a very short walking distance it was surprising to find the island much larger than expected and everything spread out over miles. At least the exercise felt good after days of being cooped up on the boat. Our first stop, after taking the wrong road and backtracking, was at customs only to find out that is was a holiday and no one was there. The next day when we checked in with customs we were told they had a ship come in and they were actually there at 2:30pm but the workers at the gate, “Don’t know anything.”

As we were checking in the next day, we were informed that our $15 fee was good for 7 days; if we wanted to stay longer we would need to go downtown to the immigration office and get a 30-day cruising permit for $75. Decisions, decisions, deciding how long to stay. We figure we’ll talk to your weather guru, procrastinate a few days and decide later.

We rode downtown to the marine store and amazingly enough they actually had the spare part we were looking for, too bad they didn’t have the charts we wanted, oh well. How important are charts anyway? I’m sure we’ll find some eventually, since we somehow managed to leave home without paper charts for the Turks & Caicos, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

We headed on up to the northern coast for some lunch at da Conch Shack. It is a charming little shack of a restaurant painted in colorful hues of pink, green and blue, sitting right on the beach. As we waited for our meal and sipped on their “infamous” rum punch, we watched the men on the beach cleaning conch. IB went down and got a few pointers. Since we were out of conch and not allowed to take any in the T&C’s he’ll just have to wait to put his new information to use. After our pleasant meal and a few rum punches we were ready for our 5 mile ride along a busy highway back to the boat.

A word about dingys. Our dingy is essentially our family car. It is how we get to and from our boat, how we get to reefs to snorkel, it’s well our lifeline to land. We are careful to make sure it is tied and even locked with a steel cable when we leave it at a dock. The possibility of having our dingy stolen is always there, even if we lock it, as thief’s are known to cut cables and take dingys, sometimes even from the boat at night. Knowing of this possibility, and dreading ever being faced with it, we were completely dumfounded as we rode up to where we left the dingy tied to find the dock gone. It took a few minutes as we looked at each other, looked at where

the dock used to be and our little brains tried to process what our eyes were seeing. Never did we imagine the possibility of someone taking the dock! We walked down the small steps to small section of dock that still remained, and then we started breathing again as we saw that someone had moved our dingy and it was still there waiting for us. They didn’t even cut our cable, but broke off the cleat it was attached to. No swimming back to the boat that day.

Back to the big debate. Pay the $75 and stay a few weeks, or head on down to Puerto Rico. The winds are going to be shifting to the southeast, so we need to leave this anchorage as there is no protection to prevent the wind and waves to beat on our boat and rock us around. There is supposed to be a short window with light winds from that north that could get us to Puerto Rico. The window seems like it will barely be long enough. After a bit of thought we decide to just stay for a few weeks and head up to the north side of the island. We had initially wanted to go to the north side as the bay there has lots of coral, snorkeling and diving nearby, as well as stores and restaurants in the vicinity. We ended up in Sapodilla Bay, on the south side, because the day we arrived with our north wind, the north swell was breaking across entrance channel to Grace Bay and would have been very dangerous to attempt getting in there. We pulled up the anchor and headed over to North West Point for the night and anchored just

off the beach where Columbus anchored in October of 1492. The beach used to be the site of Tiki Huts where the French game show Pago Pago was filmed. During the show contestants would dive down to about 35 feet, swim into a large cage and collect pearls from artificial sponges. They had “mermaids” under water with scuba tanks and the contestants could exchange bracelets for air. There was however a “bad” mermaid that would swim away and refuse the contestant air at the last moment. The show did not last long. The next morning we moved over to one of the nearby dive moorings and got out our scuba gear. The cage was just at the bottom of the mooring, although it is now collapsed and laying in pieces. The fishes still like it though. From there we swam in about 40 feet of water to the wall drop off. Floating over nothingness, with the bottom too many hundreds of feet down to see.

After our dive, we quickly stowed our gear and headed around the point to Grace Bay. We wanted to be sure that we entered the bay while the sun was still high in the sky to allow us the visibility needed to dodge coral heads. The banks of the Turks & Caicos are littered with coral heads that could cause big problems if we accidentally ran into one. Fortunately, the black spots that show on the surface from the sun are easy to identify and avoid. Once inside we anchored just off the beach in front of the beach resorts. The people in the resorts are paying a lot of money to sit on the beach and swim in the clear water; we’re not paying anything to anchor here.

Remember when we decided to stay for a while? That was just two days ago right? Well we’ve listened to the latest on weather and the window looks longer than we expected, so we’ve changed our mind we’re going to leave before spending the $75 on a cruising permit. Into the marina we go, to fill the diesel tanks, top off the water, charge the batteries and get some groceries. Since I still had yet to get that romantic dinner out I wanted on Valentine’s Day, this seemed like a good night for it. After searching the internet for restaurant reviews, I made reservations at Coyaba. It was finally warm enough in the evening to wear my summer dresses without getting chilled, so I pulled out my little white dress; my wedding dress to be precise, I knew there was a reason I made it oh so practical. We were not disappointed by the review I read. The restaurant was not oceanfront, but had a very pleasant and relaxed atmosphere. The food was truly outstanding, and I had the best company in the world. The evening was perfect. Our last one on the island, tomorrow we head back out to sea.

Bye Bye Bahamas

The Exumas turned into a whirlwind trip. Wasn't really planned that way, but weather had it's way with us and that's what happened. The northern Exumas really seem like a great tropical place, and someday maybe we will enjoy them a bit more! As it was, we transited through the islands in a weeks time only making three stops before Georgetown. Our first stop, Royal Harbour, Eleuthera. It was just an overnight stop after crossing from the Abacos, time for some cocktails and dinner before bed. The following day took us across the banks to arrive at Allen's Cay in the Exumas. We stayed put here for a couple of days, visited with the Rock Iguana and spent a day in the water hunting lobster and conch. We were successful, returning to the boat with 10 conch and a large lobster. Dinner was very good.

A bit about Rock Iguana. They were once found throughout the Bahamas but were wiped out as a food source. They are now protected by Bahamian law and there are two colonies in the Northern Exumas. These are the relatives of the iguanas that were used as dinosaurs in the old horror movies.

From there we followed the western coast south to Norman's Cay, two nights there, then on to Staniel Cay. We got stuck in here for a few days with weather blowing us around, as soon as it cleared we headed out the cut into Exuma Sound and spent the day sailing down to Georgetown. We arrived the day before Chris Parker's weather seminar. We explored Georgetown, didn't take very long, learned a little more about reading weather fax and gribs, and met our weather guru. What we didn't realize before arriving in Georgetown, was that we arrived the week of the Regatta. Basically meaning there were bunches of boats, well over 300. We enjoy meeting and spending time with other cruisers, for us, this number was a bit daunting. There were quite a few people there we knew and didn't get to spend too much time with, although we would have liked too. Of course there was also the weather, it turned around to the Northwest and blew for three days, and the anchorage was a rockin. One morning I got out of bed, stumbled outside, looked around at the clear blue sky, beautiful turquoise water, and wondered how this could really be a day of bad weather. The I looked at the waves rolling under the boat, the white caps on top of them, sunk back down below, felt a little queasy from the rolling about, went back to bed and said, yep it's a bad day.

I was quite elated after three days of this weather when our weather guru, Chris Parker, announced to us that it would be a great opportunity to sail straight down to Puerto Rico. We had planned on taking our time and visiting the southern Bahama islands, but they are 250 miles of islands scattered about to the southeast. That would be the usual direction of wind. With a little issue of boat insurance, resulting in us changing our insurance company and needing to wait a week for all the changes to take effect we needed to stop in the Turks and Caicos till the insurance was finalized. Not quite Puerto Rico, but still about half way, besides we did want to see it anyway. For just over 48 hours we had some beautiful Northwest winds gently pushing us straight to our destination.