Arrived in Turks & Caicos – so surprised to find it’s a British territory

We had the most peaceful night’s sleep, and Captain R said we would leave when he wakes and no need to go early. So when he woke me and asked me to get the anchor up, I blearily obeyed, only once we were sailing along in the dark did I discover it was 3:40 in the morning! He says he read his watch wrong. never mind it was a good sail south and I was allowed to go back to sleep. I dozed off and enjoyed seeing the sun rise from my porthole.

The first sighting of the T & C’s was a little sad, as we thought we could see big trees and then realised they were buildings. On closer inspection through the binocs we discovered the enormous complex along this gorgeous white beach was all abandoned and half built. We heard later in the evening it was a Lehman Brother’s project that went bang in 2008. What a tragic waste of a gorgeous beach.

Photo of the Lehman tragedy!

We finally got to our Marina, Southside (which we had mixed reports about) at about 10:30am, thankfully mid tide as it is not navigable at low tide. It was quite a hairy narrow route in, especially as you pass a few wrecks along the way. Lovely small coral islands, which are meant to look like Turkish hats, hence the name.

The Turk’s hats

Loads of infrastructure here and looks a lot more happening than the Bahamas. Bizarrely the marina was run by a snowy white English man – Bob from Lincolnshire. He has lived on the island 41 years, moved from Canada where his parents took him when he was 3. A little crusty as first but he grew on us. It was a tricky manoeuvre reversing into a tight spot between two boats and picking up lazy lines (memories of sailing in Croatia came flooding back!). You have to arrive with your quarantine flag up, and then only the captain is allowed off to meet the customs officer and fill out all the forms. Rowan had read they can be a little officious, and as they have to drive to the marina from their offices, it gave him enough time to shower and smarten up (that doesn’t mean much in R’s terms – but he did don clean shorts and a shirt). We got through that and then had to wait for immigration to arrive. In the meantime we were hooked up to water with a power hose and I managed to give the boat a massive hose down and get rid of the salt that was everywhere. Hard to describe the joy of a clean boat! Finally all sorted sometime late afternoon.

Bob owns the marina and on a Monday night he has a BBQ night where you bring your own food to BBQ and a dish to share at 5:30pm (US eating time!). There were not many yachts in, so only one other boat joined in, an American couple with two daughters. Besides them Bob had invited some friends – H an old salty sea dog Norwegian artist who was a character, his competitor marina owner and a young couple who had crashed their boat on coral and have been waiting 6 week to get it repaired in the dry dock. Lots of stories to hear which was interesting.

We have finally decided to head south to the BVI via the Dominican Republic, rather than do the long 4-5 day sail out east (which is completely wind direction dependent, and no sign of the wind obliging), even though we know it has C Virus and we will most probably not be allowed in anywhere else afterwards. There are more big winds looming Thursday and Friday so we want to get going. Good to go to bed with a plan.