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.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 