Getting There the Hard Way

The shortest distance between the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos is 48 miles. That brings you to West Caicos (which we didn’t have any recent information about) or the Caicos Banks, an area that you have to travel during good daylight to reach the island and city of Providenciales (Provo), our destination. Either way, you have to count on at least 12 hours to safely get to the islands. In order for us to do this trip, we would have to sail at night. The problem, however, was that we could not leave our anchorage in Abraham’s Bay (Mayaguana) any later than 4pm, because of the surrounding reefs. The only other option, moving to a south eastern point of the island during the day and wait (anchor) there until departure time at night, was out of the question because of the strong south east winds at the moment. There would be no way to wait comfortably or take the dogs to shore one last time, over there. People without dogs could just go VERY slowly until the sun was high in the sky to continue onto the Banks, but what were we to do?

We’d read and heard about free dive moorings off the east coast in West Caicos. We also knew that they were going to build a marina there a few years ago. All of us would appreciate a comfy night at a dock… So, we left our last anchorage in the Bahamas around 3pm. The plan: trying to find a mooring ball by arrival (at night) and if that didn’t work, check out the marina in the morning. Even though we had good light to leave the bay, trying to find the reefs and rocks proved to be very hard and stressful. We couldn’t make out what was where and compare it to the chart. I stood on the boom and tried to decipher all the dark spots in the water. There was no obvious route through them. We zigzagged a bit, picked a route and were soon headed straight towards a coral reef. It wasn’t until we got closer that the colour (brown) seemed totally wrong. Not really sure how to proceed, Mark stopped the boat a few times. Slowly but surely we picked our way through the narrow openings and after what seemed like the most stressful time of the trip (Mark was having a dry mouth and cold sweat), we reached deep water. Pffffff…

Mark and I decided to just motor with one engine and see what time that would get us to West Caicos. Raising the mainsail was useless, since we were –of course- headed dead into the wind. Slowly, the Bahamas disappeared in the setting sun. We took turns behind the wheel and arrived near the dive sites at 3am. There, we used our powerful light to search for mooring balls. The moon was helping us more than the light, whose batteries soon died anyway. We couldn’t find anything. We checked out a few locations, using the exact coordinates on the chart. Nothing. The higher the moon rose, the harder it was to make out anything. It was as if we were trying to find a needle in a haystack. After an hour, we gave up. We turned Irie back to the ocean and decided to hang out there until dawn.

A few dolphins caught our attention around 6:30 am, at which point we started radioing the marina. Our whole trip back to shore was spent with the VHF in our hands. Nobody answered. Back near land, we got close to the marina basin and “peeked our nose” in. The only thing we saw was a lot of barges and construction materials. Obviously, no real marina had been built yet. We tried to find the mooring balls again, but there were none. Now what? The sun was too low for our trip over the Banks. So… back to safe water to float on the ocean for another couple of hours. The dogs hadn’t gone to the bathroom for over 18 hours. The sea was pretty calm and I coached them onto the trampoline. After a bit of encouragement, Kali was a good listener and relieved herself. Darwin wouldn’t have anything to do with it. We thought it would be the other way around…

At nine thirty, with some sun in our eyes, we decided to risk it. The first hour or so would be pretty straightforward and after that the sun would be high enough to see the rocks and reefs of the Caicos Banks. What was more, because the wind had shifted a bit, we were able to sail this last part of our voyage. We managed to make out and avoid the dark spots in the clear water and reached Sapodilla Bay in Providenciales around noon that day. It had taken us 21 hours to do a total distance of about 60 miles! But, man, were we happy to drop that anchor in the sandy bay and retire. Our relief was nothing compared to that of the dogs, when they finally did their business (for minutes, it seemed like) on the yellow sandy beach…