Month: March 2024

Evelyn, Caroline and Samantha flew home today after a very short but amazing 1 week vacation with us on Crimson Kathryn. The rest of our week together was spent at the pool and doing some snorkeling. I think we all got lots of reading done as we relaxed in the lounge chairs either on the beach or by the pool.

On Monday, March 25th, we put the dinghy back in the water and headed out to the north side reefs. Mark and Bill had snorkelled this area the week before so we knew it was good. With 5 people in the dinghy, it was a bit of a wet ride – lots of water over the bow. It didn’t take long to get out to a good spot and we all went into the water to check out the reef. There were many different types of fish in a variety of colours, shapes and sizes. Unfortunately the coral in this area was not very healthy but we did see a few new types of coral that we haven’t seen in the Bahamas.

On their last day (March 26), the 3 ladies decided to do the bird reserve hike that we had done with Donalda and Bill. Mark took them by dinghy part of the way so they didn’t have to walk quite as far as we did. It was another hot day but they were well prepared with sunscreen and water. We gave them Mark’s phone (which has a Turks & Caicos phone number with data) so they could contact us when they were ready to be picked up. Unfortunately, we forgot to give them the password for the phone, so they ended up walking back to the resort. They headed straight for the pool to cool down from their walk!! That night we had a wonderful meal and made our plans for their departure in the morning.

We decided to rent another car to take the ladies to the airport. The car arrived at 10am today (March 27th) and we were at the airport before 10:30am – plenty of time for the 1pm flight. It was super sad to see them go – we had such an awesome visit!!

Now it’s time to start making our way back to Reynolds Park. We took advantage of having the car today and did some laundry and a last food shopping. Tomorrow (March 28) we will check out of the marina and go back to where we were anchored before we came in. On Friday, Mark will dinghy back to the marina to officially clear out of Turks & Caicos and early Saturday morning, we’ll pull up anchor and head north! The plan is to sail all the way to Cat Island – 240nm and then clear back in to the Bahamas probably on Monday morning at the airport on Cat Island. This trip back to the USA will be a quick one because our Bahamian cruising permit expires on April 13. As usual, our wifi will be limited to non existent until we are back in cell tower range in the Bahamas.

Our wonderful marina vacation continued this week as Evelyn and Caroline arrived on March 20th. Their plane arrived a bit late (all that Toronto snow slowed their departure) but we quickly got into island time by having a late lunch at a great restaurant called Mango Reef. We took advantage of the last day of the rental car and filled our trunk with some wine and lots of groceries for the week. We made our way back to the boat and the girls were thoroughly impressed by the resort and marina. After a little pool time, we had low key dinner and went to bed early (those 5 am airport runs really take it out of you).

The next day, March 21, was a partially sunny day with a few sprinkles over the course of the day. The unpredictable weather didn’t deter us from our pool and beach time. We swam a bit, read a bit and relaxed a whole bunch. We ended our first full day together with a wonderful sip poolside.

On Friday, March 22, Samantha flew in to spend 5 days with us. Samantha is a university friend of Caroline’s but she has become great friends with Evelyn too. Although Sam was quite tired she still explored a bit of the resort and enjoyed Mark’s amazing rib dinner. We ended the night with some good tunes and great conversation.

Saturday was our shopping day. We took the 10:40am shuttle to Blue Haven’s sister resort so we could visit the Salt Mills shopping area. We got lucky this time because a couple asked to be dropped off just before the shopping area so we got off at the same time – didn’t have to walk back from the resort. We had lots of fun looking through the shops (a second time for Mark and I but still interesting) and all the ladies bought some nice items. We had lunch right beside the shopping area and then walked back to the sister resort to catch the shuttle back to Blue Haven. The sister resort called The Alexandra, is much larger than Blue Haven and is situated with a lot of other resorts. It has more restaurants, 2 pools and a much larger beach area but Blue Haven seems nicer (and has the marina!!).

We still have 3 more days to explore the area. We’re planning a dinghy ride through the canals behind the resort. We’re also hoping to get out to the north side of the island to snorkel the reef. If the prediction holds, Tuesday will be a good day for that adventure.

As a little treat to ourselves and our guests, we decided to book a slip in a very swanky marina called Blue Haven Resort and Marina. It’s located in the north east side of Providenciales. We had originally booked our two week stay for March 17 – 31 but because we were so early in getting to the area, we decided to modify our dates and go in 2 days earlier. We headed into the marina on Friday, March 15. It was the best idea ever!!

Before our decadent marina stay, we moved from our first anchorage between Mangrove and Donna Cay on March 12 because it was crazy busy with tour boat traffic. We had a rocky breakfast that morning as the wakeboarding powerboats cruised by us. We figured it should be calmer right near the marina so we pulled up anchor and moved. It turned out to be a very good spot – we could watch all the tour boat action but weren’t bothered (too much) by wakes.

The next day, March 13, we decided to go for a big walk to a bird sanctuary nearby. We took the dinghy over to Blue Haven and asked to tie up at one of their docks. The marina has 24 hour security and the gate into the docks can only be opened by the guard on duty. The guard gave us permission to tie up to the main dock and we told him we’d be back in a few hours. It was a very hot, sunny day and the 6-7km walk tired us out. We were really looking forward to heading back to the boat and maybe going for a swim. The guard opened the gate for us and as we approached the dinghy we could see that it had been booted!! Our dinghy was locked to the dock!! We were so confused. Mark headed up to the office and after a discussion (which included security video footage of the true offending dinghy – not us but another guy who had abused docking privileges the day before), the head of security realized they’d made a mistake and let us go! We had a good laugh about it during happy hour that night.

Friday, March 15 was a super windy day – over 20knots of wind. We were assigned a slip on the outside of the marina and with the strong southerly wind, Mark moved us into the slip smoothly. This marina is very new and they have a wonderful cleat system. All the very large dock cleats (what your dock lines tie up to) are in a slot rail. After temporarily securing your boat, the dock hands get an impact drill, unscrew the bolts and move the cleats to the perfect position to properly secure your boat. It’s very slick! By lunch we were all tied up and relaxing at the dock.

As the name says – Blue Haven is a resort and marina. We have access to all of the resort stuff – the beach and more importantly, the pool!! There are also bars and restaurants which we can visit. The resort is all-inclusive but because we’re at the marina (not the resort), we have to pay for our drinks and meals. It’s still very nice to have access to all the resort amenities. It became our late afternoon event to go to the pool and then get a drink. We called it a dip and sip!

We also took advantage of the free shuttle that takes you to Blue Haven’s sister resort which is within walking distance to shops and more restaurants. We had a fun day looking around the shops and the other resort. We also decided to rent a car for 3 days so we could explore the whole island and go out for dinner at a restaurant in town.

All in all we had a fabulous time with Donalda and Bill. We managed to see lots of Providenciales, get some good walks in and finish lots of wine and at least one full bottle of rum! We took the Stevens to the airport this morning. We did laundry and have cleaned the boat up for our next visitors – Evelyn, Caroline and their friend, Samantha. Super excited to have them onboard!!

Donalda and Bill arrived on March 7th and we rented a car to meet them at the airport. It was an easy pickup and we were back at the boat having lunch by 1pm. After spending some money on the island buying enough groceries for the next 2 weeks, we ventured out to The Bight area for their Thursday night fish fry. It was a very busy spot and we enjoyed some yummy local food!

We left South Side marina around 8:30am on March 8th and headed to West Caicos. It was a perfect wind morning and we hoisted our spinnaker for the first time this season! What a glorious sail we had for the 12 nm trip to the north anchorage at West Caicos. This area, known as Brenard Bay, is quite shallow and you need to keep an eye out for coral heads as you enter. We spent a very interesting 2 nights here. We walked the beach and took a long dinghy ride down the west side of West Caicos. There’s lots of diving in this area and mooring balls (for the commercial dive boats) are positioned all along the coast. We did a bit of snorkeling in one area – saw lots of fish and a ray but the coral wasn’t very healthy.

Our first night in this anchorage was calm and quiet until something very strange happened. It was dark; Mark was at the bbq, Bill was on the bow and Donalda and I were in the cockpit. We could hear this loud noise like an airplane flying low. Bill is the first to notice the boat navigational lights coming straight for us. Okay the noise isn’t a plane – it’s a boat speeding directly at us! We had lots of lights on – cockpit lights, interior lights but I ran down and turned on the anchor light (which I’d forgotten to do earlier) to make us even more visible. At the last moment (or at least that’s the way it felt), the big powerboat changed course and slowed to within about 30 – 40 ft of our boat. This all white boat with no markings (no name or any way to identify it) started at our bow, turned along side of us and gave us a really good look before it sped off towards West Caicos. It was super creepy and we speculated all night about this suspicious and scary boat – were they military on patrol or drug runners!! In the morning (Sat. March 9), we found the boat tied up in the basin of the abandoned marina on the northwest side of West Caicos. We decided not to approach them although we were super curious!

On Sunday morning (March 10) we decided to move slightly further north to the anchorage Mark and I had hung out in while waiting for Donalda and Bill to arrive – near Wiley Point. We had another great sail for the short 7nm trip and anchored very close to our previous spot. We did a nice dinghy ride to the south end of this bay and visited the Pirate Cave. That night after a quick wifi session, I found out that the wind was changing to north on Tuesday. We were planning to stay near Wiley Point for a few days and then head to the north east end of Providenciales but it’s not recommended to enter the Leeward Cut (or any north shore cut) with north or west winds so we pulled up anchor by 8am on March 11 and motored the 30nm around Providenciales. It was a crazy calm day and the ocean was smooth with long, low rolling waves! It was a wonderful trip around! All was going so well – we had a following current and we were able to motor in the low 7knots most of the way. We were ahead of schedule and just about to enter the narrow Leeward Canal (that has reefs on both sides and a fair bit of shoaling in spots) when the engine broke a fan belt and started immediately to overheat. Of course this couldn’t have happened when we were all alone on the ocean – Nope! It waited until we were entering the channel while 2 sailboats were coming out!! We did a quick turn away from the channel entrance, dropped anchor and shut off the engine. I radioed the outgoing sailboats to advise them of our situation and they manoeuvred around us. Mark quickly got us up and running again and we did the last 1.5nm to our anchorage without incident. We stopped just north of Blue Haven Marina between 2 islands – Mangrove Cay and Donna Cay. We’ve gone all the way around Providenciales in the first 5 days of Donalda and Bill’s visit.

It’s been quite awhile since my last post – darn limited wifi!! We only have a phone plan with 8 G of data so we have to be very careful to make sure it lasts the whole month.

We’ve had a very interesting start to our exploration of Providenciales. We’ve discovered a few things already and the biggest discovery is that Turks and Caicos is not a cruising destination. It’s definitely beautiful and has some awesome beaches with nice blue water, but it’s very shallow and only has a very limited number of protected anchorages.

We left South Side at high tide on Feb. 24 which made our exit significantly easier than our arrival. Our first stop was at Taylor Bay – a somewhat sheltered bay about 5 nm west of South Side Marina. This bay is right beside another popular anchorage called Sapodilla Bay. Both these anchorages are close to the government dock (the main commercial dock for Providenciales) and are very populated with villas, resorts and restaurants. It’s definitely very picturesque but also very touristy. It’s not the usual place we would anchor. We did dinghy to the beach and walked the length of it – quite nice. We also took a dinghy tour around the area and found some very interesting rock formations.

As the wind started to turn more east and south east, Taylor Bay became quite bouncy and rough so we decided to move to the west side of Providenciales for better protection. We left Taylor Bay at about 10 am on Feb. 28th. It was a very short distance (5nm) but because the Caicos Banks are so shallow, you can only get into some of these anchorages with high tide. We carefully made our way to an anchorage just south of Wiley Point and found a nice spot to anchor in about 9ft of water.

What a difference 5nm can make!!! We went from a rather touristy, congested area to a nature reserve where we were all by ourselves. We had several, long white beaches and some inland salt lakes to explore. The weather was perfect – sunny, hot and a good wind blowing to keep the boat cool. We spent a bit of time walking the beaches and one day we dinghied into the one salt lakes. We saw a couple of turtles and lots of mangroves. It was a fairly large lake but too shallow for our dinghy to go very far in.

We took advantage of our downtime to clean up the boat. We spent time cleaning and polishing all the stainless parts of the deck and the isinglass – the plastic window part of the cockpit enclosure. Mark worked on jobs that have been on the list for several years. We did an inventory of our pantry items and reorganized that area. We cleaned up the V-berth to make room for Donalda and Bill. It was a very productive time!

After the first few days in our Wiley Point anchorage, the wind began to increase from the east, making it difficult to explore much of the area. Although we were very comfortable on the big boat, riding in the dinghy was a wild, wet adventure. We did venture out to do some snorkeling but it proved to be just too wavy to get in the water. We did manage to check out all the beaches in the area and we saw a few beautiful red starfish on one dinghy ride.

By the time we decided to leave our lovely little spot, there were 8 other sailboats anchored with us. We have learned that most of the cruisers here are only in the area to wait for the next weather window to continue heading south. We met a young couple from Florida who said they were travelling with 5 other sailboats – all were heading further south.

Today (March 5) we moved a grand total of 5 nm from Sapodilla Bay to the marina. Again we had to wait until it was almost high tide and we still crossed over an area that was only 5.6ft deep. Good thing we only need 5ft😁😁. It’s nice to be back in the land of wifi!! We’re in the same spot on the dock and we had a great takeout dinner tonight. Tomorrow we’ll do laundry and finish getting the boat ready for our first guests. Donalda and Bill arrive on Thursday (March 7th) and will be with us until March 19. Time to explore more parts of Turks and Caicos.