The Thorny Path - Turks and Caicos

We arrived at West Caicos just before sunset and gratefully tied up to a mooring ball, no pulling up the anchor by hand tomorrow - yay. In the early afternoon we motor-ed over to Sapodilla Bay on Provo and anchored in 9ft off of a pretty beach with holiday rental houses and a happening beach bar. The next morning Michael dropped me off in the dinghy and I walked up the hill in search of the customs office. I followed google maps and walked right into the port authority, being passed on the sandy road by large trucks hauling containers and kicking up dust clouds. I learned from the security guard that there is a new building for customs and I backtracked up the road to a nice new building on the main road. I checked us in and then went next door to the gas station store to get some bread and drinks. Provo feels quite modern in comparison to the places we have been to in the Bahamas, the gas station store more well stocked. 

The next day Micahel and I got out our 2 folding bikes, to do a grocery run into town. We left the kids on the beach with lots of water & snorkel gear, Christian in charge, and we hit the road. The route was 7 miles along the main road/ highway. We cycled past a turquoise inland lake and through some rolling hills in the countryside. Our first destination was a large ‘Do it’ centre - it was at the top of a large hill and as we pulled into the parking lot we were beyond hot and I was bright red from cycling in the heat. The AC felt heavenly. We found a new camping stove & lots of fuel to tide us over until we sort our propane stove issue out. We also got a new lantern for our cockpit evening dinners and we had delicious chicken stew at the little cafeteria to keep us going. Next stop was the grocery store, I did this part on my own and Michael headed back to check on the kids who were just fine thoroughly enjoying their beach day. The grocery store was fully stocked and I loaded up on cheese, veggies and breads. 

Our buddy boats had all arrived that day and began the check-in process. We discovered that the French boat has a super experienced father & son onboard. The boat has no fridge, no windlass, and they have no outboard. However, their main engine just stopped working! They have owned the wooden boat for 40+ years. Very inspired by the simplicity of their purist approach. Wildly intrepid suggested renting a car together to tour the island and asked at the little beach bar for rates. We need to get fuel and water and a car would make this much easier.

Our water maker boost pump stopped working a few days ago and unfortunately our tanks were not super full. We need to get some water soon. I researched marinas, there is 1 close by with a complicated entry we could do only at high tide, that would cost $90/night + $.50/gallon for water and $7/gallon for diesel. Or we could get creative. Michael had been keeping an eye out on the beach and had spotted a coiled up hose at one of the resorts. That night, under the cover of darkness, we executed ‘operation big jugs’. Michael loaded the dinghy with our 2x5 gallon jugs, and each kid had a job. He rowed the dingy close to shore and then put the anchor down. Flo guarded the dingy, Christian was lookout while Michael brought the hose close to the beach and filled our jugs. I was waiting at the boat and filled our water tanks so they could return for another round. We completed 3 rounds that night.

The second night of operation big jugs, Michael & the kids got ready & headed to shore, but as the dingy landed and Michael got the hose ready, a security guard showed up and was shining a light at them. We had been found out! The team came back to the boat, empty handed.

In the end we organized the car ourselves and the next day we were picked up by a woman from Scooter Bobs who drove us to the car rental place to pick up our little car ‘Willy’. Michael & I then got the gas & diesel Jerry cans and we did a run to the gas station to fill up on fuel. We then got the kids into the car and headed out to Omar’s on the beach for lunch, a local's spot the car rental lady recommended. We sat on the shady patio and enjoyed burgers and jerk chicken and the fun caribbean atmosphere. From there we drove to Grace Bay, a large resort area on the north side of the island and had a swim and found some showers we could use to have a real shower. We’ve been limiting our water use and have stopped showering on the boat until our water maker is fixed. So a real shower is the ultimate treat whenever you live on a boat!!

Freshened up, we got a few more groceries and made our next stop at the water filling station. Turks & Caicos make their water from seawater, and you can fill jugs for $0.40/gallon at designated filling stations. Our big jugs didn’t fit so we had to buy some 1 gallon jugs and fill the bigger ones from that. The kids loved it - putting the change in the machine and filling the jugs back & forth to the trunk of the car - cheap and a fun novelty for us. Last stop was to get more diesel and carry it all down to the beach, load up the dingy and we were back on the boat, tired and satisfied after a productive day out.

Our next leg was to sail across the Caicos banks to get in some good easting and traverse to the other side of Turks & Caicos. According to our guidebook, The Thornless Path by Bruce Van Sant, we needed to be careful as there are some very shallow areas, coral heads and shifting sands. We got up and out at sunup and made our way south to French Cay, thinking we would stay there if needed. We made good time so we decided to make the full run across the banks.  

It was a gorgeous day, a great weather window, but as we turned towards our destination we were very close to the wind - which means motor sailing. This turned into frequent tacks as we got closer to Six Hills, our anchorage for the night, the easternmost side of the bank, just off of South Caicos. That’s when we realized our anchor was lodged in the bowsprit!! Seriously stuck. It was about 6pm, an hour and a half until sunset. What do we do? Michael & Christian went forward to try and dislodge it. Not happening. He then got out our only other anchor - a Fortress designed for mud. He assembled it and attached it to our rode and threw it out and we tried setting it - but we were dragging. The French boat showed up at this time and got nicely anchored. We tried again to get a little closer to shore and set the anchor again - but unsuccessfully. It was getting dark. We talked about switching to our chain - Michael would need to undo our primary anchor and attach it to the Fortress. We decided to also move closer to South Caicos about 5 miles away to get a more protected spot. So I drove the boat in circles until Michael had changed the anchor over. We started making our way over to our new spot, now in the dark. That’s when the engine started acting up, losing power!! Something was wrong. So we had to get the mainsail up in a hurry. It was challenging to keep the boat in the wind, the battens on the sail kept catching on the lazy jacks. Finally Michael was able to get the sail up, and we sailed towards our anchor spot. Our first anchor under sail! We put all the chain out we have - 250 ft and watched the anchor pro - it looked like we caught- then we slipped. We waited and it caught again - but once again it slipped. The anchor was catching for more time than previously, so we held out hope that it would finally settle. After about 30 minutes in 1 spot, we felt a bit more secure, we could see that we were now swinging normally off the anchor. I let Michael go to bed and I took the first shift watching we were not slipping. There are so many jobs on the boat that I feel not strong enough or just clueless that I am happy to be the one to stay up late - something Michael really hates to do! After 2 hrs we still hadn't budged, so I let him know that he could keep sleeping and we were good. We made sure the anchor alarm was set and slept the rest of the night.

In the morning, Michael dove the anchor and saw that the anchor was trapped under a rock, which is why we had settled, but would be challenging when we tried to pull it up again in a few days.

I took the dinghy in with Christian later that day to try and check us out of Turks and Caicos. It was about 3 nm to get into town, a roughly 45 minute dingy ride for us as we were going against the wind and couldn't plane. The bay gets super shallow and we needed to row part of the way over a particularly shallow section. Once we neared town, we looked for the 'Marina'. we found a protected breakwater area with some fishing skiffs and tied up our dingy alongside, and walked through the town. Everything was closed. It felt like a deserted ghost town, as we wandered down the mainstreet, looking for the port authority, which was also shut. There were a few men milling around, a few stray dogs and someone was blasting steel drum music. We decided to walk around a bit and we didn see some smaller shops but each one we approached, even if the door was open said 'no- closed'. Well, at least we knew where to go when we came back tomorrow