7 -- 13 June 2009

7 June 2009

Spent the early part of the day getting ready to sail over to Grand Turk, about 25 miles.  Later in the afternoon, went to the High School and used their WiFi to check the weather. 

 

8 June 2009

In the morning, Mark and I went ashore and made one final trip to the grocery store.    Not sure what we will find at Grand Turk, so it is best to stock up now.  Then underway at 10:20 am, headed across the channel to Grand Turk.  Mark and Rachelle sailed to Big Sand Cay and spent the night there.  I arrived at Grand Turk in the dark and anchored close to the freighter dock on the southern part of Grand Turk, near an old U.S. missile tracking station, now simply called South Base.  What once the taxpayers funded as a Cold War installation is now enriching Carnival Cruise lines as a playground for cruise ship tourists.  In the middle of the night, a strong squall came through and it was quite reassuring to have a healthy anchor and chain.  The winds screamed by at about 45 knots and the steeply-sloped bottom makes anchoring tricky.  Some spots just a couple of miles from the western shore of Grand Turk are several thousand feet deep.

 

9 June 2009

I moved from South Base up to the Front Street anchorage just off the main town of Grand Turk.  The entrance through the reefs was tricky.  Probably the only reason I made it was because the tide was high enough to float over most of the coral heads.  Sometimes it is best just to be lucky.  Went ashore and explored the town.  The town is much nicer than most of the towns in the Bahamas.  Found the national museum and bought another Wavey Line chart of the Dominican Republic that shows the southern harbors.  Mark and Rachelle arrived at 2:30 pm, after stopping for brunch at Salt Cay.

 

10 June 2009

Today was the only day during our stay at Grand Turk that there were no cruise ships in port.  So, no crowds of sunburnt tourists snorkeling in the harbor.  Did laundry early in the morning.  There was only very light wind all day, and later in the evening, the mosquitos came out with a vengeance.

 

11 June 2009

No wind today and the water was so calm you could see the anchor clearly in 12 feet of water.  A stingray and several jacks were swimming around the boat.  Mark and I bicycled to the north end of the island and explored the channel to North Creek, the local hurricane hole.  The entrance channel is shallow and tricky and the anchorage inside has many shallow areas, so we decided not to try it.  As seems typical, there was an abandoned dredge that could have turned North Creek into a first-class facility and provided an economic boost.  Someone had big plans, but the project probably died from the thousand cuts these people seem so skilled at inflicting.

 

12 June 2009

Met Dave on an old home-built green trimaran named Faith.  Dave and his wife are sailing missionaries and are proud of the fact that the number one Google search for “sailing missionaries” lists them.  Their website is www.sailingservant.org  They are transporting generators and bibles to Haiti, and stopping along the way to help local churches.  Mark and I bicycled to the airport, where I checked out with Immigration.  The Customs guy was grossly overweight and safely locked inside an air-conditioned room watching a DVD on his computer.  He had no intentions of working, so he told me to go to another Customs officer, somewhere on South Base.  I decided then to ignore the whole checkout procedure from Customs.  Am beginning to think that their conflicting information and inefficiency is simply used to maintain job security.  Their incompetence seems to breed the very problems they should solve.  We walked through the cruise ship development and watched thousands of tourists partying.  One restaurant was full of people surfing the internet.  Were they on vacation, or were they simply working in an exotic location?

 

13 June 2009

Today, we sailed to Salt Cay in preparation for the crossing south to Luperon.  Dave, the missionary from S/V Faith, rowed over just as S/V Markelle was pulling up anchor.  I talked to Dave for awhile and then pulled up the anchor and was underway at 12:30 pm.  In an effort to appease the weather gods, I sacrificed a perfectly-ripe piece of watermelon by throwing it to Dave as I sailed out of the anchorage.  I think preachers like watermelons.  It was a nice, easy sail south to Salt Cay.  Markelle was moored to a dive mooring, so I tied up to their stern for the night.  The shore is so steep-to that anchoring is tricky.  Mark and I went ashore, where we found an old cannon aimed right at our boats, along with some leftover donkeys from the salt-raking days, a few wild cows, and one worn-out minivan.  About 80 people live on the whole island.