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Providenciales or "Provo", Turks and Caicos is a big tourist island - most of the hotels and restaurants are along the north coast. We are anchored in Sapodilla Bay on the not so developed south side of the island. We got here after a rough two day sail of 180 miles from San Salvador. The trip started out fine as we close-reached into 15 knot winds and seas off our nose. As the day wore on the winds picked up and the seas turned on to our bow. We had to motorsail to punch through the chop that would either stop us dead or drop us off into a 6 foot trough. After 30 hours of this we finally were able to turn south around Mayaguana towards Provo. Our timing was off a bit in that all our "buddy boats" were strung out behind us so we hove to and bobbed slowly in the wee hours of the morning. Kirian arrived in about an hour, then Opal as we drifted at about 1.5 knots to the Provo banks entrance. Around dawn, Gravy Boat and Lala appeared in the morning light and we made a caravan in through the reef entrance for the 6 miles snaking around coral heads and sand bars into Sapodilla Bay. Just as we entered the shallow banks a squall kicked up and reduced visibility to near zero. It quickly passed and we set our anchor in 8 feet of water that was about a 1/2 mile from shore - Sapodilla is very shallow for quite a ways out. We dinghied to shore with Kirian and cleared into the T&C Islands.
After a bit of rest, we hitchhiked into "town" and had lunch at a Jamaican hole in the wall - the food was great and the beer was cold. The proprietor sat with us and told us of his dreams to buy a boat and import marijuana into the T&Cs from Jamaica - pretty funny. We got a new SIM card for the phone and stocked up on provisions and then made our way back to the boat. The winds started picking up and blew from the south and east strongly for the next 7 days. During that time we spent drinking and dining at the nearby resort called Neptunes - killer mohitos and rum-laced mango smoothies - and taking trips either via rent-a-car or thumb. On our group car rental we shopped at a "hurricane damage" liquor store where we picked up a couple of grand cru Bordeaux and Burgundys for less than $15 each.
We finally cleared out of Provo and day-sailed to French Cay to the south for a night. As we set out from Provo, Gravy Boat 's engine overheated and they turned back to seek a mechanic. We arrived at French Cay about 2pm and tried several times to set the anchor. The anchoring there was awful - the bottom was concrete and almost impossible to set the hook though that same bottom was covered with conch. You can imagine what we dined on for dinner. The next morning we sailed to the Ambergris Cays, dodging coral reefs all over the place. We arrived there in good light about 4 in the afternoon followed quickly by Kirian. Opal and Lala came just at sunset - they were very lucky that they didn't hit anything. The next few days there the weather was not so good - squally and windy - so we snorkled and hunted the reefs all around us. We dined on lobster, trigger fish, and grouper most every night. There were tons of large barracuda everywhere and once I saw a large reef shark just off my left side - that was it for my day of diving!
We finally got tired of waiting for weather and set off for Big Sand Cay (the last stop in the T&Cs) early in the morning. We first went north dodging reefs and then turned east looking directly into the rising sun. This made reef spotting impossible so we did a "wingman" thing where we looked for problems ahead of Kirian and they did the same for us as we led the armada out. With no problems we arrived at Big Sand early in the afternoon and dropped the hook in deep clean sand just off the beach. It was like we had the whole island to ourselves - paradise! We decided to stay a day and went ashore the next morning to beachcomb and swim. The windward side of the island is incredible - covered with debris, mostly plastic bottles, floats, and nets. The strangest thing was the number of shoes littering the shore. Kirian collected over 100 and built a "shoe path" along the sand. We found another 25 or 30 and added to their artwork. Among the tide pools we found several beautiful shells including an incredible Emperor's Helmet - the only one we kept.
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