CruiseNews 39
Date:  26 February, 2001
Port of Call:  Abraham's Bay, Mayaguana, Bahamas
Subject:  The Turks and Caicos Two-Step
 
Passport stamp from Turks and Caicos
Since arriving in the Turks and Caicos at the beginning of February, Sovereign has been doing a two-step dance across the islands:  we spend a few days in one anchorage, move on to one harbor, then another, only to backstep the following day.  It is the special geography of these islands that dictates this unusual method of travelling across them.  The Turks and Caicos are a string of a half-dozen low islands, with numerous scattered cays (pronounced "keys"), which span about 85 miles of the southwest North Atlantic.  They are geographically part of the Bahamas Platform, but politically they are a British Crown Colony and are unrelated to the Bahamas.  The islands jut abruptly out of the deep Atlantic, rising several miles straight from the bottom of the ocean, only to peek (or peak, if you prefer) a few dozen feet above the sea.  The islands are generally rimmed by coral reefs with turquoise waters, then outside the reefs the sea turns deep blue as the depth plummets suddenly.  The eastern Turks group is surrounded on all sides by deep water, while the western Caicos have an extensive shallow bank on their southern side that extends some 40 miles before dropping steeply away.  The shallow coral, requiring a high sun angle for good eyeball navigation, and the long distances between island groups, necessitating long passages between anchorages are what set these islands apart from those we have previously visited.
 
When we first arrived on 2 February after our passage from the Virgin Islands, we dropped the anchor in an easily accessible spot off of Cockburn Town, Grand Turk, which didn't require any eyeball navigation through coral.  The next day, in order to clear in with customs, we moved down to the south end of Grand Turk and anchored off the commercial dock.  After checking in, we raised anchor and motored back to the town, and with the sun high overhead providing good visibility of the coral beneath the water, we anchored inside the reef near Cockburn Town.  We spent a few days anchored off Cockburn Town, where we repaired the watermaker and visited the excellent museum ashore.  The museum featured exhibits from the earliest excavated European shipwreck in the Americas, circa 1515.  It was filled with the usual cannons, guns, and metal artifacts, as well as photographs of the ballast pile and excavation process, plus information on the natural history of the area.  We left the museum both entertained and informed.
 
On 6 February, we sailed the 23 miles across the Turks Island Passage to South Caicos.  We passed through the cut at South Caicos, where incongruously the beacons at the harbor entrance are green to starboard and red to port, the only place I know of in the Americas where this is the case.  We turned out of the channel and tucked in behind Long Cay, where we found our first truly calm anchorage in over a week.  Unfortunately, this was not to last, as during the night the wind began building, and by the next day we had winds of 20 to 25 knots.  While protected from the sea swells, a large wind-driven chop made the anchorage less than perfect.  We spent the next nine days socked in as we waited for conditions to calm down.
 
 
The rocky outer shore of Long Cay, South Caicos
A few times, despite the windy weather, we ventured out in the dinghy.  We went ashore and saw the town, a collection of roughly a hundred small wooden houses and a few shops.  We explored Long Cay and took the obligatory photo of Sovereign at anchor.  We walked the deserted beach on the eastern side of South Caicos.  One day we snorkeled at the harbor entrance and had the thrill of seeing numerous spotted rays engaged in a graceful underwater ballet, spiraling through the water, their long tails streaming behind them.  We also had the excitement of seeing a pair of sharks cruising the reef's edge and watching us ominously through their beady eyes.

Trying out the rat lines
Most of the time we stayed aboard Sovereign, reading and doing odd jobs. Several times each day a voice would come on the radio saying (we think) "Singer Sam, now go one-three" (though he could have easily have been saying "sing a hymn," or pretty much any three syllable phrase starting with "sing" and ending with the letter M).  We switched the VHF radio to channel 13, and listened to a lone voice belting out church hymns with plenty of feeling, though not much adherence to any particular key.  When we weren't being entertained with hymns, we worked on improving our ratlines so we could climb up the mast to the first set of spreaders.  We also read a lot, putting a big dent in our stock of "trading books," cheap paperbacks that we swap with other cruisers.  We re-watched the few movies we had aboard.  I even fired up Visual Basic on the computer and wrote a program to help with my ham radio operations.  I'll admit it; after nine days with no place to go, we were getting stir crazy.
 
Finally, on 16 February, the winds eased down to 15-20 knots, and we decided to try and cross the Caicos Bank.  We raised anchor about 0730 and motored out the channel and around Long Cay.  At the south end of Long Cay, we entered the Banks.  I climbed up the ratlines and scouted the way as Cathy steered.  After getting through the first few miles, the underwater obstructions were less numerous, so I climbed down to deck level to look out.  Throughout the day as we motored across the banks, we swapped duty standing watch for coral heads, one of us on the bow, the other at the helm steering.  It is a little disconcerting after being in deep water for so long to have to think of 10 feet of water as "deep".  In these islands, as long as you're not aground, you're in "deep" water.  As we motored along, we watched the sandy bottom roll by beneath us, and admired the clouds above, tinted a faint mint-green from the reflection of the color of the banks.  We anchored that night in Sapodilla Bay, on the south side of Providenciales (called Provo by the locals), thoroughly exhausted after a strenuous day of piloting through the coral.  Even though the boat rolled uncomfortably at anchor in the chop coming around the point, we both dropped into bed early that night.
 
The next day, we moved around to the northern shore of Provo.  We raised anchor and motored across the banks towards Sandbore Channel.  In the middle of the channel is a large area of agitated sandy water which makes it impossible to see the bottom.  We skirted the sandbore and sailed out into the blue abyss, watching the depthsounder readings drop from 12 feet to off-soundings in less than a minute.  We sailed around the northwest corner of Provo in bright, sparkling conditions.  We arrived off the entrance of Sellars Cut anticipating some difficult coral navigation.  I climbed up the ratlines to the spreaders as Cathy steered.  Fortunately, we found the entrance much easier than we anticipated because the marina at Turtle Cove had placed a series of buoys to mark the best water.  We followed these in, and anchored just outside the marina entrance.  Unfortunately, the reefs there were not quite dense enough or tall enough to completely block the ocean swell, and we spent yet another night sleeping in our sea berths, rolling at anchor.
 
The following morning we waited for the sun to climb high enough to again provide good underwater visibility and we motored back out through Sellars Cut and then headed east the few miles towards the next opening in the reef, called Leeward Cut.  As we motored along, a large squall approached from the east and shut out the sunlight.  We slowed the boat to the slowest speed we could make and still maintain steerageway, and hoped for the squall to pass before the sun got too low for good eyeball piloting.  Finally, when a brief opening appeared in the clouds, we made a break.  With Cathy at the helm, and me up the ratlines, we steered for the narrow gap in the reefs.  The cruising guide's sketch chart showed two buoys at critical points at the entrance, and suggested that a big marina under construction when the guide was written would probably dredge the entrance to cater to mega-yachts.  We expected a nice deep channel marked by buoys like the one we had just left.  However, as we piloted through the reefs, we found nothing of the sort and found that to the contrary things seem to have silted in, making passage even more difficult than we expected.  After running aground once and backing off, we finally made our way into deeper water inside.  We anchored in the shelter of three islands, and enjoyed flat water for the first time in over a week.  We were the only boat visible, except for the masts of some day-charter catamarans on the other side of one of the small cays.

Our first priority after getting a good night's sleep was to try and buy some groceries.  We hadn't been to a grocery store in three weeks, and our supply of fresh goods was running low.  We dinghied over to the "marina", a concrete wall along the side of a creek, which supported a few local outboard-powered boats but certainly no mega-yachts, and checked on the availability of a grocery store.  We were told it was a $15 taxi ride from the marina, about 8 miles away.  We decided to hitchhike instead, but before we even made it off the dock, we were offered a ride by the owner of a local dive-boat.  He drove us all the way to the grocery store and dropped us at the front door.  We were thrilled!  We bought our groceries and managed to catch a bus back to the marina.
 
 
Iguana, Little Water Cay
We spent the next three days catching up on sleep and exploring by dinghy.  One of the islands we had anchored by was Little Water Cay, which is a wildlife sanctuary.  We took the dinghy ashore and walked to the start of a boardwalk that ran inland from the beach.  When we reached the boardwalk we were met by several iguanas, perhaps two feet long including their tails, which seemed to have no fear of humans.  We walked along the boardwalk, shooing away increasingly larger iguanas and reading signs about the iguanas and the local flora of sea grapes and silver palms.  By the time we had finished the loop of the boardwalk, several boats laden with tourists had arrived and they followed a tour guide along the boardwalk.  I hitched around for another go while Cathy, who had had quite enough of iguanas, walked the beach.  I found that the reason the iguanas had so little fear of us was because the tour guides constantly tossed them red grapes, which the iguanas devoured instantly.  The guide said the iguanas were harmless, unless perhaps you had painted your toenails red and they thought your toes were grapes!
 
A few days later we went to the north side of Water Cay and spent the day walking along the beach and snorkeling the offshore reefs.  The reefs had nice healthy coral--staghorn, elkhorn, brain, and fan--as well as many plenty of small reef fish like parrotfish, blue tang, grouper, and wrasse.  It was the best snorkeling we had seen since leaving the Tobago Cays in December, and we were glad to find another place with healthy reefs.
 
We couldn't leave our anchorage until the time of high tide coincided with a reasonably high sun angle, so we wound up spending five nights in this snug little harbor.  We were occasionally passed by small skiffs chasing bonefish on the flats, or a day-charter catamaran with a load of passengers, but otherwise we had everything blissfully to ourselves.  Finally on 23 February we raised the anchor, and with me directing from the first set of spreaders, we were able to make our way back out the tricky and shallow entrance to the relative safety of the open ocean.  We two-stepped back to Sellars Cut, which this time seemed like a breeze compared to the difficulty of navigating Leeward Cut, and entered Turtle Cove Marina to take on fuel and clear out with customs.  After those tasks were done, we exited the marina, dropped anchor again, ate lunch and stowed the dinghy on deck.  Then we exited Sellars Cut once more, and retraced our previous track back around Northwest Point, anchoring at Atlantis Beach on the western coast of Provo.
 
Off the shore of Atlantis Beach there were no reefs to cause problems for our planned early morning departure.  On shore was a beautiful white sandy beach and, just a hundred yards away from our boat, were the remains of some grass-thatched huts.  According to our cruising guide, the grass huts were formerly the set of a French game show in which contestants won points on shore, which were later traded for breaths of air in the under-water treasure hunt portion of the show!  We pondered the complexities of the unusual game show as we watched the sun set behind us over an unbroken horizon.
 
The next morning, we were underway by 0530--well before sunrise, but with just enough gray light on the eastern horizon that we could see things on deck without using lights.  We motored clear of shore, then raised the triple-reefed mainsail and unrolled the staysail and yankee.  As the gray dawn progressed to a gray day, the wind built from the east, and we gradually rolled away the yankee until we were sailing under just the triple-reefed main and staysail in persistent 22 knot winds, with occasional higher gusts.  As we left the Turks and Caicos behind, Sovereign seemed to be dancing to a different tune.  Gone was the two-steps-forward-one-step-back anchorage dance of the Turks and Caicos, replaced by the roll-slide-twist-settle, roll-slide-twist-settle of a broad reach in boisterous seas.  Sovereign was prancing along at six knots, and we rode along with her, safe in her embrace, wondering what steps she would teach us next.
 
Smooth sailing,
 
Jim and Cathy