TCI

Our Boat flying our extra large Turks and Caicos Flag

After a rather rough and wavy sail where we debated turning back and heading for Mayaguana in Bahamas we finally made it to Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). We came to Providenciales (Provo) the main island because we were meeting friends who were flying in for the week.  We anchored in Sapodilla Bay - a very rolly anchorage but the setting is beautiful and is on a lovely beach.

Sapodilla Bay Anchorage

In Sapodilla Bay there is also a short hike up a rocky trail to the top of a hilltop that offers great views of the Bay and Chalk Sound. At the top of the hill are rock carvings dating back to the early 1800s done by sailors who were shipwrecked there. The carvings give the dates and names of the sailors.

Rock Carving

Views from hilltop 

Checking in with Customs and Immigration was a nightmare! It took three tries and two days for immigration to even show up, despite us having to pay the weekend premium. TCI provides a one week pass for crusisers where you have to pay US$50 to check in and US$50 to check out plus an additional US$15 checkin and out fee on weekends. We arrived Saturday but weren't able to check in until Monday since no one knew where the immigration officer was. So technically our boat was only allowed to stay for a week starting Saturday but James and I weren't checked into the country so couldn't leave the boat until Monday evening - kind of a rip off. After the seven days cruisers then have to pay an additional US$300 to stay!!! It's not the smartest plan since it just encourages cruisers to leave within the week. We went to Customs and Immigration on the following Saturday to clarify if our week was up or if we could stay until Monday since we had no desire to pay $300 for another few days. Low and behold no one could find customs or immigration to check us out. Security was calling and texting friends and no one knew where they were so we were unable to check out! oops. It certainly was not for lack of trying.

Enjoying a beer at the Bar across the street from our anchorage while waiting for our friends to fly in.

We had an awesome week hanging out with our good friends Tracy and Baude and their two sons Nate and Gabe. They all flew in from Florida and rented a condo in Grace Bay so we were able to spend each day with them exploring the beaches, trying in vain to find Flamingos, snorkelling, swimming and eating some awesome food! Since they had a condo it meant that we got to have free daily fresh water showers! They also very generously brought some much missed comfort foods like chocolate and other British delicacies along with an Amazon order we placed! Nate is a big people person and makes friends with literally every person he encounters. He'd been at the beach for approximately 14 seconds and had made friends with two kids from Boston. We ended up making plans with their parents, Andy and Nicole, to meet the family the next day at another beach so the kids could play. Turns out Andy is a bit of a bartender and had made his own mixes for Mojitos and Rum Punch and so we enjoyed a rather lazy day on the beach chatting with our new Bostonian friends and drinking divine rum based cocktails!!

Tracy and Baude and the kids even braved it one night and came "glamping" on our boat! It was very windy and fairly rolly but they were troopers and stuck it out. Sadly, it was so windy there was a "Small Craft Advisory" so we weren't able to take them for a sail. We did however enjoy a sunset, star gazing and we got to see "glow worms". For about 2-3 nights after a full moon marine worms, called Odontosyllis enopla or "Bermudian Fireworms", gather in the shallow waters of the TCI Banks to mate and spawn. The female worms release their eggs which then rise to the surface of the water. The eggs emanate pulses of bright green light that signal the male worms to come and fertilize the eggs. They are only found in the shallow waters of TCI, Bahamas and Bermuda.  They're called "glowworms" in TCI because the worms emit green flashes of light that are visible from the surface of the water. So all around our boat were sparks of neon green luminescence - it was quite beautiful!  

Boat Uno 

Cheeky Sailor

We all went to the Thursday night Fish Fry - an island wide event where about 15 food venders

Conch Ceviche

gather and cook their specialities with live music and artists selling handicrafts. We shared a delicious conch ceviche, grilled red snapper, ribs, BBQ lobster, and jerk chicken while listening to a local band playing a variety of Caribbean music. It was a lovely night with such a great atmosphere. James and I really enjoyed spending time with friends and it gave us a mini vacation from the boat.

Fish Fry!!

Our plan from TCI is to head to Haiti and around to the south coast of Dominican Republic (DR). Most cruisers head to the north coast of DR where it sounds like they don't get to see much of the country and spend their time waiting our weather in one location before braving the Mona Passage. We're both really interested in the history of Hispaniola since both Haiti and DR are big players in the history of the Caribbean. We met another boat in our anchorage and were briefly chatting with them about our plan to head around Haiti and south in the DR and they were interested in our plan and did some reading on it and decide to join us! We're super excited to have another boat for this part of our journey and are really looking forward to travelling with Michael and Becca on SV Dark N Stormy.

Crowd at the Fish Fry

Conch Ceviche Bar

Fish Fry Band

The Thorny Path

We left Georgetown and headed to Conception Island - another Bahamas National Trust Park. It was a beautiful, calm, quiet, small island boasting Tropical Long Tailed Birds. The birds looked a little bit like a small seagull with a 1.5ft tail! We walked around the island and scored a milk crate that had washed up on shore that we can use for storage in our dingy (it's a very glamorous lifestyle). We also found a small mangrove pond and salt river that meandered through some small salt ponds - these were packed full of marine life: green turtles, manta rays, nurse sharks, bone fish and lots of other colourful fish.

Salt River on Conception Island

From there we headed to Rum Cay another small island, but this one inhabited by some of the most lovely people we have ever met. We pulled up to the beach in our dingy and a man rode over to see if we needed help getting it out of the water and onto the beach. Everyone we met there went out of their way to come over and talk to us. Sadly their beautiful island was hit quite hard by Hurricane Joaquin this past September. Many roofs were covered in US AID tarps and several homes and shops were completely levelled. The beach was wrecked and most of the sand was dragged out to sea, they also lost their dock making supplies and travel harder for them. Despite all this they all said how “blessed” they felt since no one was injured.

Shop Destroyed by Hurricane Joaquin

While we were walking around the town we passed the school during recess and all 9 students were out playing frisbee and excitedly but shyly ran over to wave to us. We also met a woman in her 70s and her mum in her 90s who were chipping away at rocks by hand to make gravel to repair their home. Even though it was hot and humid and the labour was back breaking they waved us over and chatted with us for a while. They asked if we were on the yacht in the harbour and said they have hardly had any cruisers this year because of the damage from the hurricane. We asked here if there was anyone on the island who made bread so we could buy some - she said they had made a loaf yesterday and offered to give us a few slices! We were so struck by the spirit and generosity of everyone on the island - people who had lost so much and in some cases everything were so happy and willing to share what they had.

Miss Wilson 

Many even commented on how many nice second hand clothes they received from Nassau - now that is a "glass half full" mentality if I have ever seen it. We continued on and met Miss Dolores Wilson a spritely 84 year old bar and restaurant owner. Most of the bar was covered in sand from the hurricane and the door was missing its glass but she invited us in and we sat with her and had a beer while she told us her life story. She has written two books and is working on her third - all three are about her life and the history of the island. She is really good friends with Sir Sidney Poitier who writes the forewords for her books! She told us a little about when the hurricane hit: everyone met in the church and was planning on waiting it out there until water started coming in the church. At which point it was decided to move everyone to the health centre. Dolores, who had just had major abdominal surgery in Nassau, was having some trouble getting into the truck with all the wind. She said the local “boys” had to carry her on and off the truck and into the Health Centre. She said they still remind her of that in order to try to get some free rum at her bar! She has certainly had a most interesting life and actually had eyes that sparkled when she told some of her more mischievous stories. I asked her if they still had the salt ponds for collecting sea salt and she said not like there were before Joaquin  hit but that she had been out earlier collecting some salt and gave us a bag of the sea salt she collected - it’s delicious! 

House after hurricane on Rum Cay 

Trees uprooted from hurricane

We headed out the next morning because there was some strong wind coming and we needed somewhere with good protection - we sailed to Crooked Island and then onto Acklins Island. There were some true “out islands” - we didn’t see anyone the whole time we were on Acklins and only two fishermen at Crooked. On our sail across the Bight of Acklins the water was completely flat and only 9ft deep the entire way so we could clearly see the bottom and it was littered with huge starfish the entire way.

Green clouds in the Bight of Acklins

About halfway across the bight the wind died and we were sweltering hot so we dropped the anchor and went for a dip! Gotta love sailing somewhere you can drop the anchor at anytime and go swimming! 

Sadly Acklins and Crooked were both hit hard by the hurricane and up to 70% of the island was submerged. We ended up spending 7 days there riding out some fierce wind. The swells were so strong on the first night that our poor ancient old snubber snapped - took us a few minutes to work out what the god-awful smacking sound was (it was the anchor chain bouncing and smacking the boat). We were able to climb out onto the pulpit and jimmy a replacement. We were planning on moving southeast along the Bight since part of the reason we chose that location to ride out the weather was the ability to still move around as being stuck on the boat gets hard on the head. Sadly that didn’t happen. We tried to go ashore one day but the waves were so large and the beach was wiped out by Hurricane Joaquin so we had nowhere to land the dingy - that was the only time we ended up leaving the boat in almost 10 days - we were pacing like caged animals by the end of it. There were two reasons we didn’t move onto other anchorages in the Bight - it is charted as quite shallow and was all charted pre-hurricane so we were worried that the sandbars would have shifted and we certainly didn’t want to run aground with no one around if we needed assistance. The second reason was when we turned our engine on to move the boat to a slightly different location our fuel pump wouldn’t turn off - it took the whole day of trouble shooting to realize the problem was our fuel bowl where the filter sits was so caked with crud that there wasn’t enough room for fuel! Of course a special kit is needed to disassemble and reassemble to bowl and we don’t have it - lucky a filter change did the trick for now. 

After the winds died down we sailed it to Salina Point at the south end of Acklins. We went for a swim off the boat and decided to check out the shore. As we approached the shore in our dingy we could see a commotion in the water near the shore where we were planning on snorkelling. It was sharks wrestling with their prey!! We could see two dorsal fins speeding through the water - one looked like a nurse shark so we weren’t too phased but as we got closer the very distinct crescent tail of a bull shark thrashed through the water as it attacked something (maybe the nurse shark). We were getting ready to reroute the dingy when a massive bull shark starts to surface right next to our inflatable boat - we sped back to the boat and made a G&T and said no thank you to snorkelling or going ashore. 

At this point the winds had not been cooperating with our plan to get to Turks and Caicos and so we had to motor more than we wanted. Unfortunately, none of the islands we were visiting sell fuel after all the damage post hurricane. We spent the better part of one day trying to come up with a plan on how we could sail as much as possible in the direction of Turks and Caicos but to somewhere with fuel: Matthew Town, Great Inagua ended up being our destination - a rather unlikely route to Turks and Caicos and we were beginning to understand why it is called “The Thorny Path”. The prevailing winds are East winds and Turks and Caicos is East of the Bahamas so getting there is a real thorn in your side. So we did the 100 nautical mile 18 hour sail to Great Inagua.  It was a beautiful night for a sail - we had 18knots of wind and so were able to sail the entire way there. We had smooth seas and shooting stars and a spectacular moonset, sunset and sunrise.    

Matthew Town, Great Inagua

Our first order of business in Matthew Town was to track down some fuel. The town's economy is based on sea salt and there is a massive Morton's Salt plant there and hires a lot of people. Therefore the town has more money than a lot of the islands we visited and is more built up. The harbour is under some major construction and there are diggers and construction vehicles everywhere. We pulled into the harbour in our dingy as there is no place to dock the sailboat - there is just a concrete wall with a narrow inlet completely unprotected from the ocean and boats have been stuck in there and unable to get out with the waves - so this meant we were going to have to jerry can fill the tanks again! We drove around the small harbour looking for a place to tie the dingy but there was nothing - there were a bunch of guys on a fishing boat in the harbour so we asked them where to tie it but they didn’t speak English. Another dingy was puling in so we asked them and they said the only place was to tie to some rebars on the concrete wall and then to scale the wall - perfect. The 6ft concrete wall was crumbling in places exposing the interior rebars - it was these we were able to curl our toes and fingers around and haul ourselves up the face of the wall - no easy feat I assure you. Once on the top there was an garbage disposal (much needed as were carrying around 3 weeks of trash), bathrooms, a shower, and an “administrative office”. The office was able to tell me where we could get some diesel and also informed me the showers were free - she laughed at me when I asked how much they cost: “They’re free man”! We found the diesel man who said to bring our jerry cans and to leave them at the gas station and he would take them to the dock to fill them but that he would need some time. We said no problem and headed into town to get some basics and some water and to explore. There was a Flamingo tour that took people to the centre of the island where there are small ponds and pools with shrimp that attract the legendary pink birds. We really wanted to do the tour but the diesel man still hadn’t surfaced and fuel was our priority. In hindsight there was plenty of time to go on the tour since buddy didn’t get the fuel until 6hours later ( the diesel tank was at the dock which was maybe 60 steps from the gas station - still not sure what the hold up was - oh Island time!).

Even though we missed the Flamingos we saw a few huge bright green parrots flying around the island. We asked where to go for lunch and the lady we asked said “oh I’ll drive you somewhere” - she left work and drove us to a restaurant! And thank god she did as there was no signage anywhere. James had fried chicken and fries and I had fried shrimp and fries - that and fried pork were the only times on the “menu”. The butterfly shrimp was the best I have ever had - these Flamingoes are onto something.   After lunch we were finally able to get our diesel but were not too excited about trying to scamper down the flat wall face with 5gallon jugs in one hand. The boat full of fishermen that we asked about the dingy dock were out on their boat and saw us standing on the top of the wall with our dingy below - this created quite the fuss! They all came out and were gesturing to us and whistling - I think they were a little impressed we were able to scale the wall and saw our predicament in trying to get back down with the fuel. Turns our they were Haitian so through a combo of my rusty French and their creole French we devised a plan to get our fuel back onto the dingy. We tossed them our painter line and they dragged our dingy to the front of their boat. We then climbed over a barge and a tug boat and onto their boat where we dangled off the side and dropped down into the dingy - since the fuel man lent us 2 more jerry cans we only had to do this 3 times instead of 6! After our last diesel run we were only too happy to scale the wall to a free shower!!!

Free Dock Shower

There was no handle and no shower head and yet it was still pure bliss after a day walking around in the blazing heat and climbing all over flighty boats and walls. 

We sailed to Little Inagua the next day to break up the trip to Turks and Caicos. Little Inagua isn’t charted in our chartbook so we were a little apprehensive about pulling into shore there to anchor. We asked around Matthew Town and people felt sure that the west side was sandy and that boats did stop there and Google Earth confirmed it. We were the only boat at Little Inagua but even without a chart it was no problem getting in and makes for two nice shorter sails instead of a long one to Turks and Caicos.   

Our lasting impressions of the Bahamas;  a country full of smiling, genuine, caring, thoughtful people. I’m going to miss being called “baby, darling, friend, mate, man”, being offered rides by complete strangers and being spoken to or waved at by everyone we see. We’re also going to miss having beaches to ourselves and miles and miles of clear blue water. It’s going to be so hard to say goodbye to the Bahamas but we’re excited to meet up with friends in Turks and Caicos Islands and to continue travelling and exploring.  

Church rebuilt after hurricane on Rum Cay

In the distance - Salt mounds waiting to be loaded in Matthew Town

Crooked Island

Sand Floor Bar in Rum Cay

Restaurants in Matthew Town

Nurses and Nurse Sharks

Allan's Cay

We have left the chain of the Exuma Islands and it's going to be hard (and painful for you to read) to do a complete summation of the three weeks we spent there - so I'll just do some highlights.

The Exumas are an archipelago of 365 islands and cays so the locals boast "an island for every day of the year"! After leaving Nassau we went to Highbourne Cay - our first Exuma Island! There we were able to meet up with our friends on sv Maewyn - the family from NS who are on the same kind of boat as us and who we met all the way back in Port Washington! It was really nice catching up with them especially since shortly we're heading to Turks and Caicos and they had to go back to Nassau for boat repairs so we won't be running into them again :( We spent about three weeks making our way south along the chain of cays and islands - each one surrounded by crystal clear water every shade of blue you can imagine and lined with talcum powder soft white sand beaches. Some of the cays were quiet and have no settlements or cruisers and some have small but vibrant and always friendly communities filled with happy friendly locals who are only too happy to chat and help in any way.

At Highbourne we dinghied to a marina to fill our jerry cans with diesel and gasoline and as we approached there was a sign on the dock saying "Beware of Sharks". For some reason I thought it was a joke like the "Unattended children will be given a shot of espresso and a kitten" sign. Then I saw all these massive dark shapes emerging beneath our inflatable dingy and burst out laughing because the first thing that came to my mind was that line from Jaws "we're gonna need a bigger boat". We tied up at the dock and making very sure we did not fall into the shark infested water went to fill up our jerry cans. From the top of the dock we got an incredible view of the sharks and other massive fish swimming around - it was like looking into an aquarium. We learned the sharks were only Nurse Sharks and nothing to worry about but they were still about 13ft long and having them swim under our little dingy was quite unnerving! Sarah M. I always think of you when I see a shark!!

One of the our favourite places was Warderick Wells, a Bahamas National Trust Site and part of the Exuma Land and Sea National Park. One of the reasons we liked it so much was that up until that point we had been visiting very small Cays and while they offered great snorkelling and swimming and beautiful scenery, the beaches were quite small and didn't offer much of an opportunity to go for a walk or explore.

Trail on Warderick Wells

By the time we reached the Park we were only too happy to go off hiking one of their many trails. We spent 3 days there relaxing and exploring the small islands. One of the trails leads to a place called Boo Boo Hill where legend has it you can hear the souls who were lost on a shipwreck singing hymns.

At the top of the hill is a "cairn"where cruisers find a piece of drift wood and paint the name of the vessel on it and leaving it in a huge pile - the mementos left behind are considered an offering to the spirits for good sailing weather. It was interesting to walk around and see all the names and how many we had met or seen along the way. Of course we proudly added sv Nomads to the pile!

Exuma Land and Sea Park

We went to Compass Cay because it advertises "you can pet a shark like a dog" so naturally I was all over that. What a bizarre thing to see it is! They have constructed a low dock that sits just below the water line at high tide. These tiny nurse sharks swim up, actually it's more like they climb using their pectoral fins like arms pulling themselves up and along the dock. Here they wait to be fed and lay there while you rub them! They were so small they actually looked like gigantic cat fish.

Petting a shark "like a dog"

When we got to Staniel Cay - a place that boasts wild swimming pigs - we met up with Alexis and Darlene two colleagues I used to work with in Halifax. They had tried to message us but we didn't have internet and then when we got their messages and messaged them back they didn't have internet so I was beginning to think we wouldn't find each other. I was down in the galley making lunch and I hear "Hello from Halifax" and then a lady talking to James I thought "that's Alexis' voice" and ran up the stairs to see Alexis standing at the bow of their boat waving!

Dinner with Alexis and Darlene

Alexis was visiting Darlene and her husband John on their boat and they invited us over for dinner. We had a huge roast dinner with all the trimmings and talked about our experiences living aboard and cruising. It was really nice to see people from back home and catch up!

James and I did go and see the pigs and they eagerly swam over to our dingy to see what treats we had brought - cabbage was not a hit and most of them spit it out! One pig was happy to eat it and stood with his head resting on the side of the dingy and his mouth wide open while I threw pieces of food into it! Staniel Cay's most famous draw is "Thunderball Grotto". It's an underwater cave full of sea life. You have to snorkel it at slack tide because the current is so strong you either wouldn't be able to get in or you would be pushed out. You have to dive down and swim under some overhanging rocks for a second and then you enter the grotto. It's a little scary seeing this lump of rock in the middle of the sea and swimming under rocks and not having any idea what's on the other side. I attempted to film us swimming into the grotto but as soon as I tried to enter I got swept to one side by current so the video is just a jumble to water and rocks as I tumbled around! Once you fight through the current you enter the cave and look up to see light streaming in everywhere - it's so bright and beautiful. There is a coral reef inside and tons of fish who aren't the least bit shy. The grotto is named after the James Bond movie "Thunderball" that was filmed there. I can't imagine how they got all their equipment in there as it's quite small inside. "Never say Never Again", "Into the Blue" and "Splash" were also all filmed there too.  The bar at the marina at Staniel Cay is full of photos of Bond and the crew relaxing and drinking in the bar. After Nassau we re-watched "Casino Royale" and it was really neat to see all the places in Nassau we had just been so we're looking forward to re-watching "Thunderball" once we can get our hands on it! We did an amazing yoga class there on our last day - the perfect send off from a beautiful island.

Thunderball Grotto from the Outside

Entrance to Thunderball Grotto

Inside Thunderball Grotto

Black Point was another favourite for us. It has a settlement of about 220 people so by Exuma Island standards it's quite populated! There are several food shops there and some native straw weaving, as well as a primary school, a clinic with one nurse, three restaurants and two bars. We were able to get all our laundry done there AND take a hot shower in fresh water - what James and I longingly call "a shore shower". It was $4 for 8 mins of heaven! We got clean and our clothes got clean! We even went out for lunch while we were there - I had a fish burger and James had a conch burger and they were both great - we even had french fries and both said we can't remember the last time we had fries but I think it was in New Jersey when our engine died at sea. One of the bars on the island has a "Cruisers Happy Hour" so we met three other boats there with people our own age!!! We were starting to think that would never happen!! There was a Dutch couple there who have already circumnavigated and came back to the Bahamas before heading back across the Atlantic and home. We met a young couple from Texas who like us are new to cruising. We also met the crew of sv Vagabond from Toronto who incidentally are also the crew from one of our favourite shows "Schitt's Creek" - one of the guys taunted us with the fact that he had the script for season three but no amount of 2 for 1 rum punch specials was getting us access to it. Speaking of rum punch specials - I hate rum punch specials. We had spent the day trekking around the island and did not eat lunch and since the happy hour started at 4pm we headed there before dinner - very poor choice. We had all commented on how strong the drinks were and when we went back into the bar to order a second drink and saw them being made we were astounded - it was an ENTIRE cup full of rum with about 2 tablespoons of fruit juice thrown in. You know where is a really bad place for a hangover? A boat. Especially when you have to get up at 5am to start sailing to the next location to outrun the strong winds and the boat is very rocky.  We are hoping to meet up with Vagabond again in Turks and Caicos since they are planning about the same route as us down to South America.

Notice Board at Black Point

A puppy that I thought should probably live with us on the boat - I did not win that argument

So sad to see us leave

Basketball at Black Point

We went to Georgetown to wait out the strong winds and as far as weather locations go it was an ideal anchorage for the wind direction - it was flat and we were able to sleep. In every other respect Georgetown was not for us. It has set its own throughly bizarre cruising community with its own "hierarchy". Each morning you can tune into channel 72 on your VHF radio to listen to "The Cruisers Net"- essentially a bunch of cruisers waffle on about what is planned for the day, what the weather will be and what the lunch specials are on "Chat and Chill Beach". They have poker, church groups, AA meetings, dingy races, and lots of other "activities". We tuned in on our first day because they have a section devoted to people selling/trading things they don't need and we wanted to get our hands on some charts for further south. There were a couple of people looking to get rid of charts but you have to wait until the end when EVERYONE switches to the same channel and tries to hail whoever is selling the item they want - it sounds like someone eavesdropping on hundreds of calls on a switchboard, it was utterly overwhelming. There are hundreds of boats there and everyone has the volume of their radio so high that you don't even need to turn your own radio on to hear the Cruiser's Net - at 8am sharp the entire anchorage is flooded with the voice of the announcer. People are completely obsessed with it and bring their portable radios into the town to listen to the Net if they're not on their boat at 8am. I'm not sure if the cruising community at Georgetown is familiar with another kind of Net - it also is a great venue for advertising events and wares for sale and updating you on the weather - it's called the Internet. One of the strangest trends that we haven't seen anywhere else is a refusal by people to sit in their dinghies - everyone stands with a rope in one hand and steering the motor with the other - we haven't seen that anywhere else. The best way I can explain Georgetown is a retirement community on Spring Break. Nevertheless it was a great place to provision and we restocked the larders and filled up the water (which entails dinghy-ing over to the water spout and getting in a very long line of dinghies waiting to fill up). We went out for lunch for one last fish fry before heading to the more remote "out islands" but sadly it didn't compare to the Nassau Fish Fry. The next day we left the Exuma chain and continued to make our way south.

Stone Monument, Georgetown

Iguana at Allan's Cay

Going out for coffee in Georgetown

Best Green Peppers I have ever eaten!