Headed to 'Big South'

We're mentally kicking ourselves for waiting all these years to visit South Caicos. We've had  opportunities from time to time but it always just seemed to be more  of a hassle than we were prepared to take on at that particular moment.  Some of you must know that feeling when it's something you've wanted to do, but just not right now.  In our case the timing was wrong.  Or we had something else to do. Always an excuse and now we regret it because if we had seen this part of the TCI ten years ago we would have been looking for any excuse to come back. It's not an easy trip, but it's oh so worth it. To say we're enjoying our stay here would be very much an understatement.   To say this is becoming one of our favorite places in the Turks and Caicos Islands would not be an understatement.

This is a morning view of the entrance to Cockburn Harbour from where we've been anchored for over a week now.  The settlement here has something around a thousand people living on the rock in the left side of this photo.  On the other side of those islands is the Atlantic, with a 7,000 ft. deep trench just off the reef.

 

This trip actually started off as somewhat of a whim.  We'd been back in South Side Marina for a week or so after our last little boat trip out around West Caicos.   The WindGuru and other weather people were forecasting a really nice week ahead.  We decided to load the boat up with provisions and head out to French Cay for a few days.  Maybe get back over to the southern tip of West Caicos for some photos we've been wanting to take.  Then, at some point we changed the plan. We'd been talking about getting further away from Provo. Going to see someplace we'd never been before.  Someplace totally new.  The subject of South Caicos came up as one possibility and we looked at each other and said "Let's go." And  then we did. The path across the Caicos Bank looked something like this: 

 

 

We started out in very familiar waters.  Working our way out through the coral heads and shoals south of Provo has become second nature. Dooley the Displaced went along with the whole thing, probably assuming he'd be back on a paddleboard in Sapodilla Bay shortly. He was wrong on both counts. It wasn't going to be Sapodilla Bay, and it wasn't going to be shortly.

 

 

When we passed Bay Cay this time we turned to the east.  And we headed out to places we've only heard and read about. You know... the places we like best. La Gringa set up an iPad running navigation software and we wedge it into the little aft cabin window near the outside helm. Dooley the Disinterested settled in under my feet to keep an eye on me and away we went.   We averaged about 7 knots.  All day.   That's crossing the Caicos Banks at about the speed of a leisurely bike ride. In a three bedroom cottage.

 

 

The wind was coming from the East as usual, so it was essentially in our faces.   We decided to use the engines instead of the sails. Oh the sails would have gotten us there. Just not on the same day.   We had about 50 miles to travel and zig zagging would have meant we had to anchor somewhere for the night out on the Caicos Bank.  There's just no way we would voluntarily sail through these waters in the dark if we could help it. So as the familiar island of Providenciales slowly disappeared into the ocean behind us, we spent the next seven hours listening to the little diesels, watching the water and waves, and keeping an eye on the cloud bank developing to our north. The seas were being reasonable and that's always a nice thing. We did have about a two foot swell running but the angle between the wave direction and our direction was comfortable this time.

 

 

We only had to make about three minor course changes on the entire trip.  Our ancient "auto pilot" put us into 360 degree circles several times so we ended up steering the entire trip by hand.  Good practice for a young seaman, I suppose. Or for an old dog.    One more thing on the Fix It list.

 

Speaking of which, we had a little dogleg turn to make as we passed by Six Hill Cays.   Those were off to the south of us on the left side of this image:

 

 

You can also see that the approved route is to head down south of Long Cay into the open ocean, then turn to the Norteast and travel up to the  entrance into Cockburn Harbour and South Caicos.

 

This is what Six Hill Cay looked like from the cockpit of Twisted Sheets as we went by.  Funny, it looked a lot closer on Google Earth.  And I guess that bump on the right doesn't quite qualify it for seven hill status or something.  Maybe we'll go check that out if we have the time, inclination, boat, and weather all on the same day. Hey, it could happen.

 

 

Here's a video of our first sight of Long Cay. A couple of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins had raced out to meet the boat and La Gringa was hoping they would reappear after she went to the bow with her camera.  They did not, but she got this footage of what Long Cay looks like from a distance.  At first we thought the light colored blocks must be buildings.   As we got closer we could see that they are big blocks of limestone reflecting the intermittent sunshine.



We continued on and after what seemed like a very long day we were rounding the southern edge of Long Cay. We passed between the island and a patch of reef offshore that is named "First and Last Reef" on the charts. I guess it's always going to be either one or the other, and  maybe even both.   Now that I think about it, First and Last reef could have a bit of an ominous ring to it, too.  Many times a boat's first reef has also been it's last one.

 

And there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever when the boat passed over the edge of the Caicos Bank and into the Atlantic.  The water gets deep, dark, and big. Very quickly.  Instantly in fact.  The depth immediately takes all the turquoise color right out of the water.

 

But we'd timed the weather fairly well and the trip up along the outside of Long Cay was comfortable.  It's only about three and a half miles from the turn to the mouth of the harbor.  This is a very scenic trip.  There are vertical cliffs rising from the sea.  Some crashing waves.  We'll show you some photos of those a little later in the program.

 

We were very glad to finally be at the entrance to Cockburn Harbour.  And after ten years of thinking about it, and one day of doing it, we finally made it to South Caicos. 

 

 

As we passed between Long Cay and Dove Cay into the Harbour we were watching the skies and clouds developing. We were happy to find a place to drop the anchor and relax after a long day listening to the rattle and clatter of our little engines.  The sudden silence was like dipping our ears in cool aloe vera.  And we took the rainbow to be a good sign.  

 

 

Dooley the Desperate was in dire need of a fire hydrant or the local equivalent.  And we wanted to check out the town. We had heard that there was a new restaurant right near the dinghy dock. Neither of us felt like cooking or washing dishes after the long day, so we deployed the RIB  and took Dooley ashore with the additional plan of buying a couple of cracked conch dinners to take back to the boat with us.  We didn't have the bright sunlight that would have made these some real colorful photos. We were under gray skies, light drizzle, and lower light conditions. Things got a whole lot prettier later on.

 

This is the "dinghy dock", where we tied up the rubber boat while we explored the immediate area. South Caicos is the fishing center of these islands and there are quite a few of the local conch boats tied up here.  What an assortment.  Our little gray dinghy was fairly drab by comparison to some of these paint jobs.

 

 

 

All of the conch boats we've seen are home made, and there is an obvious pride taken in them by their owners.  Even the presently unused hulls are fairly neat and well kept. I was impressed by this little skiff on the right, too.  That boat is only about ten feet long.  That could be a lot of fun with the right outboard.

 

 

 

We didn't know where else to go so we tied the dinghy up in the row of colorful Caicos conch craft.  We didn't realize it at the time, but we would be seeing most of these boats and more at least twice a day for the duration of our visit.

 

 

 A couple of local "tour guides" approached us as soon as we climbed out of the boat. They were offering their services to show us the sights of South Caicos, for a price. The initial figure mentioned was thirty dollars. When we ascertained that neither of these guys had a vehicle and that the tour would be a walking tour, well, we decided to table that potential plan while we thought about it. It didn't help settle our minds that one of the would be guides told us that his name is "007".   I think I would have felt better with a real name.   And no, he didn't look anything like Sean Connery. He didn't look like any of the other James Bonds either, come to think about it.  Maybe if he wore a tux it would help.  Or maybe a shaken martini would do it.

 

He did have some local knowledge, though.  He told me that the very building we were standing next to was the original fish "processing plant" on South Caicos and was at least a hundred years old.  I wandered inside, partially to get a photo of the interior.   And partly to try to scrape Mr. Bond off my tail.

 

This is obviously a very old building, with cracked and worn ceramic tiles covering the ancient concrete floor.

 

 

Looking at the crumbling mortar and rock work and old knife marks on a counter surface I could only wonder how many conch and fish had been partitioned up in this little building over the decades.

 

 

We went back out to Twisted Sheets and settled in for the evening. We did snap a few photos. This is a fishing boat that is aground a few hundred meters from where we dropped our anchor. We weren't worried about water depth under our boat. We only need a little over three feet of water to float, and we dropped the hook in ten feet of depth at high tide.  That gave us plenty of clearance.  The boat in this photo is sitting on the side of a shallow sand bar that is only three or four feet deep.

 

 

I know you won't be able to tell much from this still photo, but this is what the bottom looks like leaning over the side of Twisted Sheets where we were first anchored.  This is in about ten feet of water. And just wait until  you see some photos of this water on a sunny day!

 

 

The clouds hung around overnight and into the next day. We were  happy to take it easy, getting the boat set up for life on the anchor vs life underway. It always seems to take us a day to recuperate from a boat trip anyhow and man oh man is this a good place to relax. We were both wandering around with our cameras looking at the beautiful water.  Even on a day festooned with squalls and showers. La Gringa is back in video mode, finally. I think it took a trip of this magnitude to inspire us again. Here, for example, is a short video of the water and the clouds.



We watched boats zooming by us in the harbor. This was a familiar sight, the TCI Ferry service comes here twice a week from Providenciales.  It did not look to me like there were very many passengers in there on this run.

 

 

Dooley the Downloader hasn't quite made the transition to taking care of all his business at sea. So at least twice a day we have to load the little blighter into the dinghy and take him ashore somewhere.   The first place that came to mind was the little island sitting right in the mouth of the entrance to the Harbour, called Dove Cay. The "X" marks the spot where we could land the rubber boat without having to play commando.

 

 

And that "X" spot looks just about exactly like this spot on the still cloudy conditions the next morning when we took Dooley the Distraught ashore.

 

 

 There was a bit of a rip going on over the little sand bar as waves from the open ocean wrapped around the Cay and reconnected on the lee side.  So my duty on this first trip was to just hold the dinghy while La Gringa took Dooley the Dehumidified on a quick tour of the underbrush.  Well, that was the plan, anyhow.  But he never made it to the underbrush.  I guess the specifications for what passes as an acceptable fire hydrant  loosen way up, if you make the little leakers wait long enough.

 

 

While you looking through these, please keep in mind there were some real squalls going on around us on this first full day at South Caicos.   The photographs so far don't really do justice to the scenery here, but we will be taking care of that a little later in the blog after the clouds go away.

 

We did roam around on Dove Cay a little. There's just something a bit exciting about climbing onto a small, unknown island for the first time. Maybe that's why we keep doing it.   

 

This is the view from the little leeside beach on Dove Cay looking across the channel to the north end of Long Cay.  Just about all boat traffic in and out of South Caicos comes through here.  It's possible to get in from the west, the south, and the northeast.  But not if you draw more than a couple feet of water.   This is the safe way.

 

 

This is the view from the same spot on the same beach looking north up the coast of South Caicos.  It looks like open water, but there is a reef just offshore here.   We came on a calm day.  On other days we've seen waves breaking just past that big rock nature plunked into the middle of things.

 

 

You can see that we were getting vague weather threats from the north during this entire little excursion. Amazing what we go through for one little obnoxious pushy dog. I guess the upside is that if he knew how to use a toilet we would have stayed on board and wouldn't have these photos to show you.  Trying to be a cup half-full person here, you see. Easy to do later when I'm back on board Twisted Sheets, all dry and comfy munching on Ritz crackers and cheddar cheese.

 

Climbing up onto Dove Cay there is a small plateau or ledge in what struck me as a good spot to keep an eye on approaching ships between here and Long Cay to the south.  Would make a great gun emplacement, too. In this photo, you see the Atlantic Ocean on the left and Cockburn Harbour on the right.

 

 

One might think that this would be a good spot to build some kind of shelter so that people could maintain a watch on the harbor entrance.  Not such a big deal today, of course, but two hundred years ago it would have been.  And sure enough, there are ruins of a hard packed floor and some scattered rocks and timbers just where a shelter would have made sense.  That rock to the east would block the prevailing winds while camouflaging the post. I think  maybe I've been reading too many of Stephen Hunter's Bob Lee Swagger novels  lately.

 

 

We weren't able to hang around and explore the rest of it, as we had to time our dinghy trips between rain showers.  We made plans to come back on a sunny day when we had more time. Our first two days here did have a lot of clouds and rain mixed in with the sunshine. But that can make for some nice scenes, too. This is looking to the south along the western edge of Long Cay later as the clouds started to break up. It almost makes us want to hop in the dinghy and go see what's at the end of that rainbow.  I said almost.

 

  

Our next trip ashore was a little more scenic in that the clouds were evaporating back to where they came from, the sun was breaking through, and we went to a different location.  This was on Long Cay. We knew Long Cay is an iguana preserve and that dogs are not welcome to wander ashore there.  So we kept Dooley right at the water, below the high tide marks, where he couldn't get into any trouble harassing the local lizards. 

 

 

He didn't like it, but he's used to it.   Besides, he had business of his own to attend to.

 

 

 

The terrain of Long Cay is the typical layered limestone that composes the bedrock of all of these islands. Except here the layers run in a lot of different directions. This Cay is directly on the very eastern edge of the Caicos Bank pedestal, and forming on the edge of a drop into the abyss might well have affected the way sediments were accumulating over the centuries.

 

 

As the sun came out and illuminated the scene we were struck by how very clear and beautiful the water is here.  That's South Caicos in the distance. 

 

 

 We have been getting excellent cell phone service from that tower you can just make out there in the center of this photo of the town.

 

We couldn't do any inland exploring with Dooley here, as we had to keep him basically confined to the water edge.  But we did walk along that edge for a bit to see what it looked like.  And it looked rugged, wild, and beautiful.

 

This is the view to the northwest and the little island there near the middle of the photo is called Moxy Bush. The dark lump to the right of center is the old fishing boat I showed you in an earlier photo.  And the little white blob just visible between us and the long green stretch of island on the right is Twisted Sheets. Nice long ride in a rubber boat. We decided that Dove Cay was closer and we'd keep taking Dooley there for his shore leave when the water conditions permitted.

 

 

We watched other sailboats come into Cockburn Harbour, drop anchor, spend the evening, and then leave. These were boats coming into the Turks and Caicos Islands from somewhere else.  Most likely from the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico. They can clear into Customs and Immigration here and then continue onward.  This interesting looking metal boat design caught my eye, mostly for the nice looking arch over the stern. 

 

 

Here's another of our temporary neighbors, anchored between us and Long Cay. We actually left our original anchor spot a few days later and moved over to where this boat had been when we first got here. 

 

 

This happened after we returned from a long day ashore to find three new arrivals had come in and anchored all around us. One within about 40 yards. I couldn't understand why they would want to bunch up in one area with all this empty space around.  I guess some boaters keep a herd mentality when they anchor.  We do not. We pulled our hook and moved a half a mile away, picking a new spot surrounded by dangerous obstruction notices on the charts. That seems to have had the desired result. Next time, I am going to seek out the obstructions.  They make good cover. 

 

We saw the conch boats twice a day.  They head out every morning with at least two and usually three fishermen aboard.  They go to the fishing grounds between Middleton and Six Hills Cay and spend most of the day diving for conch and putting lines in the water for fish.   We never tried to get a count, but I'd estimate something between one and two dozen of these boats would zoom by us.   Heading south to fish in the mornings, and back into town with their catch in late afternoon.  

 

 

For you boaters reading this, these guys run Yamaha two stroke outboards without exception.  It's the only make and type of outboard we've seen here, as in other parts of the country. Back some years ago when I was struggling with trying to keep a high powered, fuel injected outboard running on the local fuel I had asked one of the local fishermen why they all liked the Enduro 65 engines so much.   And he told me that reliability and simplicity was important. He said he could completely rebuild a Yamaha two stroke Enduro on his back porch in a Sunday afternoon, using only about a dozen common tools. For year after year. And these guys depend on these engines. Notice there are no radio antennas on these boats. Or oarlocks. Or backup motors. They have to depend on the outboard for their livlihoods as well as their lives.

 

We watched a scenario here that became familiar over the next few days. A boat would come zooming in from the conch fishing areas. And believe me, these guys zoom everywhere they go.

 

 

Then as the boat got nearer to town and in protected waters (like here with Dove Cay in the background), they'd slow the boat to an idle and bustle around for a few moments.  At first we thought they were having engine issues but after a few observations we realized that they were just getting the boat ready to go into the dock.  Getting their lines out from under their catch, I suppose. These boats are built like seagoing pickup trucks.  I'll get some interior photos later on.

 

 

 And then after a few moments of sorting things out in the boat they'll hit the throttle and continue their zoom.  

 

 

As I'm writing this post we're still at anchor at South Caicos. We had only intended to be here a few days before returning to Provo, but we've enjoyed the place so much we've now been here a week and a half.  And we're considering staying a few more days on this trip. And we are in complete agreement that there will be more trips.

 

We've been exploring some of the surrounding Cays here, and we rented a car one day and  wandered through an abandoned US military base. We've got lots of pretty tropical water photos, some videos, and more to show you. I wanted to get one post out quickly, and get the cloudy day images behind us so that I could get into the fun stuff.

 

And from a photogenic location standpoint, this place is wonderful.  We are getting a dozen decent sunset photos a night.  A shame I can really only use one of them at a time. Well, maybe in this case I'll go ahead and upload two of them.  This first one is of a jumbled deck right after we got here. The ladder... well, that's been on board the boat since I re-wired the solar panel array. And while I was planning on taking it back to the house-that-hasn't-sold eventually, that eventually hasn't become an eventuality. And lately I've been spending some time working on the wind turbine and the ladder has come in handy for that.  And finally, because I'm basically just lazy. 

 

And for the neatniks here's a sunset with everything all simple ocean and sky.  No human clutter, no coils of line lying around, no dinghy, no ladders.  
 

 

Please stay tuned, there is a lot more to come about our little adventure on the hook in South Caicos.

French Cay the Sequel

Sometimes we have what turn out to be good ideas. The operative word there is 'sometimes', with special emphasis on the some part of that. 'Sometime', this time, is about some other time than one of those good idea times. As this post develops, please try to keep in mind that I clearly admitted that, right up front.

Saturday morning was the first day of a three day holiday weekend. It was Memorial Day in the USA. The people of the Turks and Caicos Islands are generous with holidays, as befits a holiday destination I suppose. Here it's called National Hero's Day. Well, you can't expect a little country with no military to have many veterans to honor. But they do what they can. The morning started out well enough.



We benefit from an eclectic collection of UK, USA, and TCI holidays liberally scattered throughout the year here. This weekend was a double whammy, as it was also the annual South Caicos Regatta weekend. We haven't managed to make that South Caicos shindig yet. There always seems to be some reason not to go, and I mean other than my intense aversion to loud noisy crowds. (I know it's unnatural, and probably antisocial, but when I hear "It'll be fun, there's gonna be a lot of people...." I hear an oxymoron)

So, back on track here, we were not planning to take our little skiff to the South Caicos Regatta (for a number of those other reasons I mentioned) but we decided to take it up to that beach on North Caicos I have told you about. The one exposed to the open North Atlantic, where all the neat stuff washes up. So we hitched up the skiff and drove to Leeward. And that usually peaceful boat-launching spot was standing room only, with cars circling the parking lot, and people lined up for the boat ramp. People were either launching boats or waiting for someone they knew to show up with a boat to launch. 'Oh', I belatedly thought...' this is the jumping off place to get to South Caicos...duh...'. We turned the truck around, and hauled the boat all the way back to the canal near Southside Marina. The day was not going to set any benchmarks on the old 'tanning index', but it was usable enough. Or so we thought. We gotta play those three notes here, the ones in the melodramas that always come after 'and so we thought...! dah, dah, daaaaaahhhh...... So just read those words"And so we thought!" and push the play arrow:



(thanks to La Gringa the computer geek)



With Plan A (Leeward to North Caicos) gone for a ball of chalk, our hastily construed plan B was to head off in the totally opposite direction from the South Caicos festivities. Makes sense, right? We would go check out those old buildings on West Caicos. A mere six miles from Providenciales at the closest point. We could follow the beach, then when we were close enough to see the island of West Caicos, we would head over. Easy trip. Plan B was a good plan. I miss Plan B.

Somehow, as we left the mouth of the channel, we decided to make a bolder plan. We were looking at all the cloud formations around the Caicos Bank, and we could tell that South Caicos was getting rain. So was North Caicos. And Middle Caicos. Good thing we didn't go that way, huh? (mentally insert 3 more notes, lower pitch. more sinister. I think the Italians have a musical term for that. Or was it blues guitarists? Minor key?)

Well, the clearest sky we could see was out over the middle of the Caicos Bank. It was sunny and pleasant out there. Just to the south. And suddenly it just seemed to make sense to finally complete a disastrous trip we tried to make back in October of 2007. Yep, our really unsatisfactory first trip to French Cay. We should know better than to make these spur of the moment changes of plans. Especially when those plans were specifically developed for a much smaller scope of adventure. Did I mention that our skiff does not have a radio, nor a compass? Nor a GPS? It's got a motor, and motor gauges. And stuff to lift and steer the motor. That's it.

At this point in the narrative, I have taken the liberty of unrolling one of the few charts of this area, to give you a different perspective than just my typical screen shot of Google Earth. This time, I am showing you portions of one of the Wavey Line charts for here. They're the best I have been able to find. We're on that 'big' island under the shell. French Cay is that little bunch of squiggles to the right of the coral. It's about sixteen miles south of Southside Marina.



We looked at that cerulean blue sky, and those turquoise waters, and that new Suzuki with only about 20 hours on it, and said, heck, we can be out there in an hour, spend an hour looking around, and be back home an hour after that. What could go wrong?
(dah, dah, daaaaaahhhh...)

GPS? We don't need one. We can tell by looking which of those clouds is over French Cay, and which is over Molassas Reef. That gets us there. Steer for the tallest cloud.



Now, zooming the camera in on that particular section of chart, if you look at the relative positions of the reefs and the low, flat island of French Cay, maybe you can correlate those to the positions of those clouds in the photo just above.



That's not a lot of info on French Cay. In fact, I am not having much luck finding out much about it. Oh, yeah, I know I have previously mentioned that it's named after a French pirate named Francois L’Ollonais who hid behind it to raid shipping back in the good old days (for pirates, that is) of the 17oo's.

We've seen a lot of really nice photos of the water around French Cay on sunny days. We want to take some of those photos. This must have clouded our judgement. Did I say 'cloud'?
yep. dah, dah, daaaaaahhhh.

I looked up French Cay on Google Earth, but other than to show you how quickly the water gets real deep there, it's not a wealth of information. I did measure the little island. It's about 400 yards wide and 1200 yards from north to south.



Realizing that this was not a lot of information about French Cay, I found another, better image on the Wavey Line chart (Turks and Caicos 001). The little + marks are hard bottom in the form of reef, rocks, or coral heads. The soundings are in meters, and tenths of meters. So a depth number of "12" is 1.2 meters. With the skiff we only worry about the numbers that start with 0. And the + signs. The TCI has LOTS of + signs on the charts.



The black dotted line is about where we came in, and the x is where we beached the boat. The little dots along the beach are the extent of our foot travels on the beach. I'll explain that in a minute, because I am sure anyone that knows us would immediately ask why the heck we didn't head straight for the 'Haitian Fleet' shown wrecked all along the east side of the island on that chart.

Sitting here now at this desk, with that chart unrolled and Google Earth flashed up on the old laptop, it's pretty easy to be an armchair navigator. But please consider, when we left the house that morning we didn't plan to boat out to French Cay. We were not planning to be further than maybe a half mile from the beach at any given time. Not in Plan A, anyhow. Which is the plan we left the house with.

Heading out was no problem. We navigated straight for that cloud bank. Easy beans. Now at some point around 8 miles out, the island of Provo starts disappearing from view. French Cay is not yet visible from a small boat low to the water. Somewhere around 10-12 miles south of Providenciales, it's almost all disappeared from view. And at this point French Cay is still somewhere between 4-6 miles ahead of you. French Cay doesn't stick up very far. There is a light on a post, with a little wooden railing around it. It's not very big. So you're kinda navigating by dead reckoning at this point until you spot the island. You know you're getting close when the local air force comes out to escort you to the beach:



The first thing we see, actually, is an old wrecked freighter on the reef a few miles east of French Cay. It is much more visible from a distance than the island is, itself. We stayed the course, supremely confident in our Captain and Navigator ( cue the sounds) and  eventually we were under the cloud bank, and for the first time ever, officially standing on French Cay itself.



You heard me mention cloud bank back a few seconds ago there, didn't you. I thought so. Well, we weren't overly surprised, as we'd been steering for an island under a cloud bank for the past hour.  Seemed to make sense at the time.  I expected we would leave this cloud bank behind when we headed home.   (Yes.  The sounds again).

The very first thing we noticed was the birds. Well, the first thing we noticed was how crummy the day had turned if we were trying for nice tropical photos. But then we noticed little groups of birds flying out and around us a couple times, and then back to the middle of the island. The entire thing is covered with low vegetation. Observing the birds we immediately realized that it's spring time, and they will all be nesting this time of year. We didn't want to risk disturbing nests, and surely didn't want to deal with Dooley the Destroyer on an island full of baby chicks. So we decided to just walk up the beach to the first group of rocks, and to stay below the high tide mark. There were no birds hanging out on the sand.

So after yelling at Dooley several times to stay on the beach, until he agreed, we drifted up toward the rocks. Looking for something worthwhile to take photos of. And the few birds who had greeted the boat went back to whatever they had been doing before we showed up.

Guess what we found out? We found out that a US Coast Guard Sikorsky helicopter will flush a whole lot more birds than a little Jack Russell Terrier on the beach would ever dream of. That's the aircraft right in the middle of the photo:



The OPBAT crew went over to take a look at a sloop anchored on the far side of French Cut, then came back to the cay to look at a motor yacht that had pulled up and dropped anchor after we arrived. We don't have a radio on the skiff, so didn't hear any of whatever was going on.

Dooley the Disenchanted wasn't all that happy about being restricted to the high water mark, and had to console himself with chasing little crabs into the edge of the bush. He doesn't chase crabs very enthusiastically. He's had some startling experiences with crabs. He knows that they're armed.  And, well to put it bluntly, they're very crabby creatures in general.  You could almost say they coined the phrase.
They don't make cuddly pets, for example.   Not much marine life does, come to think of it.  Just the mammals.  And those only under duress.



Not wanting to disturb the birds, and wanting to keep the dog on the beach, I contented myself to taking a small video of the island from the top edge of the un bird inhabited part. We did not make it over to the windward side on this trip. La Gringa took a photo of me taking a video. Did I mention clouds earlier? You can see where this is going. The last time we packed up for one adventure and then totally changed game plans resulted in a very miserable experience stranded on the Caicos Bank. When will we learn?



And here's the video I took, while standing there at the border between beach and Birdville.




At this point, we had made our way up to the end of the sandy portion of beach. We looked to the southwest, and could just make out the ghostly shape of a silent sloop at anchor. It made me think of how it must have been to spend weeks out here in the 1700's, living on conch, turtle, fish and birds eggs, probably. Waiting for a sail on the horizon.

The sloop is just inside the edge of the rain under that cloud. There's that word again.



This is a slightly different view, but I put one of those magnifying glass things over the sailboat.



And looking back to the north, toward the island of Providenciales, in the direction we have to travel to get home, we see that things are not nearly as sunny as they were an hour ago. Definitely not. This huge band of thunderclouds is forming right here, along the southern edge of the Caicos Bank, right at the spot where the deep water runs up close to the reef. You know, the place we're standing on.

That's our nameless little skiff there in the middle of the photo. A little overshadowed by the rest of the composition, wouldn't you say?



Dooley the Determined had decided that a swim was in order, and if we weren't going to take advantage of a deserted beach, then he was going to take it upon himself to enjoy it. And he did.



We were in agreement that we were going to have to start back. We knew we would be going into the back of a squall line, that was moving to the north west. We considered staying out on French Cay and waiting for a while to let the heavy leading edge get a few miles ahead of us. But we realized that there were more squalls, including lightning, coming our way from the south. We were caught in the middle. And if we gambled staying on French Cay, we stood an excellent chance of having to make some of that 16 mile trip in the dark. Did I mention that our skiff doesn't have any lights on it? Not that this would really matter much, but at least it would have given us the illusion of a warm feeling to know we had lights. Just in case.

We started herding the dog back down toward the skiff.



Now, as we got down near the boat, I want to show you something. Dooley always likes to be first to get to wherever it is that he thinks we're going. Under normal conditions, he will be out in front. This was no different. Once he figured we were headed to the boat, he ran out of the water and boogied on out. Determined to beat me to the boat.

Now consider the nature of the leading edge of tropical squalls and thunderstorms. There is often the strong possibility of some severe electrical activity. Please look at the little doggy footprints Mr. Dooley is leaving in the previously pristine and untrammeled sand. He stopped at this exact spot because of a flash of lightning. And somewhere there must be a formula for figuring out how far away the strike was from the time it takes a dog to get from the flash...



To the rumble:



He heads for the nearest shelter he can think of. Which is usually me.

The first squall line of the storm had formed overhead as the trade winds were shoved upwards by this little flake of island. It had done this without raining on us, and was heading toward Providenciales at, I would guess, about 10 mph. Oh, the gusts and downdrafts within the front were much higher than ten mph, but the entire big cloud mass was moving about that fast. We really had no choice, though. We had to go now, like it or not. The next clouds building to our south looked even meaner. We had what appeared to be a small window of opportunity.



We were mistaken. The window wasn't big enough to be called small. Within fifteen minutes of leaving French Cay, we were caught up in some weather that brought the daily average way down.   We went to a negative tanning index faster than you can say Holy Shirt!!.The wind was just picking up at this point so the chop was not too bad yet, but the rain was incredible. We had to slow the boat down, as we were barely able to see 50-100 ft. around us in any direction. It was getting kinda intense on the small boat side of things. Good thing we have our sense of humor. Oh, and we got to use our new bimini top.



We didn't take a lot of photos for about the next hour. La Gringa and Dooley tried to find spots out of the driving rain, and I tried to steer a course toward Providenciales. And that might sound easy, but it gets complicated when you can only see gray in every direction. Remember, we have no compass or GPS on the boat. However, I did have my geek wristwatch on. Yee ha. This little sucker saved us.

I got this massive Casio Pathfinder wristwatch last summer. It's my 'beater' watch. I wear it every day, and save my 'good' watch from getting all scratched up. (Can you believe my good watch is a diving watch without paint or scratches on it? Not tuxedo material here, I'm afraid) The Casio does all kind of nerdy things, including measuring magnetic compass direction. Yep, I can hold it level, and push a button, and for about five seconds, I can read my compass heading. Well, this was all we needed. I had to do it constantly, because I found out that trying to steer a course for even a few minutes without checking the compass, I invariably drifted way off course. And we found out that the wind and rain direction inside thunderstorms is not consistent enough to use as a visual cue, either. I didn't realize that La Gringa took some video of this. I push the button, read our heading, figure out which way we need to correct to, and then turn the boat onto that heading. Over and over. Without the Casio, we would have had to drop the anchor and just wait it out until we could see something. Islands, lights, stars, sunrise...anything to tell us which way was north. But we had the little compass, and were able to keep moving in the direction we needed to go.


(music is 'Will It Go Round in Circles' by Billy Preston)

Then as I got more confidence in our ability to navigate home under IFR conditions, we increased our speed and maintained our heading of 350 degrees (plus/minus sixteen Hail Marys) until we eventually broke out through the leading edge of the squall line. This is what it looked like when we could finally see ahead of us again. Can you believe it was mid afternoon and still looked this dark?



Still, the light was a welcome sight after a very long-feeling hour of navigating in the mist. And then things got real busy again. Now we were on the leading edge of the squall. We had gusts of wind that must have been up to 20 kts. We had a lot of sudden and steep chop and I had my hands full driving the boat. At least we could finally see the island of Providenciales straight ahead about four miles away. So we traveled something like ten miles in near zero visibility in driving rain. Is this sounding like a holiday weekend so far?

Oh, I forgot to mention, when we caught up to the weather front, we also caught up to the lightning and thunder. It was blowing rain off and on, and the boat was bouncing over two to four foot chop as fast as I could drive it. I wanted to get well out in front of the squall line, and put the lightning strike area behind us. Dooley was Distraught. He took a position between my feet and under the life jacket sticking out of the console. I think he mumbled every doggie prayer he's ever memorized. I tried to snap a photo, but it was impossible standing up, and when I sat down so that I could take one hand off the controls, I couldn't hold the camera very still with that one hand. Oh well. You get the idea. Imagine a cold, wet, terrified dog that would gladly retire to a cozy stateroom below decks.. if he could but only find a way...



Breaking out of the soup and seeing Provo right ahead of us (as opposed to Haiti or Cuba) helped the mood a lot. We still had to make haste to get the boat to the marina, and on the trailer and home before the storm we blasted through caught us from the rear in its relentless roll across the seas.

Finally, with everyone secured at home, we watched as this squall line crossed our path for the third time today. But this time we were safe and secure. Hey, it could have been worse. We could have had a boat load of people headed home from South Caicos. Naaaah. never happen.



You know, driving rain sounds a whole lot different, in dry clothes eating popcorn under a tin roof than it does drenched in rain and seawater under a flapping canvas bimini top. There are better places to be than on a little boat getting bounced around far from land you can't even see. And there are worse places, too. Makes one appreciate a few things. Including geek wristwatches that give you atomic time and compass heading. It also measures pressure altitude. We didn't need altitude information on Saturday. We knew fairly precisely where we were, relative to sea level. We were wearing it.

So, that was our Saturday. Holiday weekend. Sunday, it rained. Monday, it rained. Tuesday, it rained, but oh there was a glorious sunset and we were in a good spot to watch it.

We don't have a good sunset to show you from this French Cay II Saturday fiasco. There wasn't one. At least, not here. But I'll make up for it with the next post.