Rays, Dolphins, Whales and Turtles

The whirlwind cruise through the Turks and Caicos continues. We last left you at Ambergris Cays where we spent a night with the full intention of spending a second day there snorkeling the reefs. We had a mediocre night at anchor – with the wind and waves picking up and rocking and rolling the boat throughout the night. At daybreak, Michael and Lorna went on a reconnaissance mission to seek out good reefs while Dave was giving Barbara a bread baking lesson on board. But Yoshi, our unfaithful dinghy motor puttered out making the reefs that were further from the boat (and downwind) a risky proposition. Our confidence in this outboard is totally gone. As Dan Stiles said, hell is a room filled with weed eaters and chainsaws that don’t work.” To that we add outboard engines (especially when you’re cruising – and have company on board). We had hoped it was a bad April fool’s joke – but it wasn’t funny.

So after some discussion we decided to take off in good light and head to South Caicos to make the trip to Grand Turk easier. We made it to South Caicos in about four hours and anchored behind Long Island. Michael and Dave rowed us all to shore and we walked around the island for a bit – with Lorna collecting more shells. We couldn’t make it to the main island which is too bad as we had e-mail connected with a colleague of Barbara’s niece who is studying conch on South Caicos. It would have been nice to meet her and hear some South Caicos tales. But it was windy and way too long a row.

We did see an incredible site at anchor near Long Island. As we got back to the boat and the sun was setting, we saw a parade of rays – some huge – coming into the anchorage. It seemed they were all coming from offshore – perhaps to rest for the night. It was fun to watch these massive dark, graceful creatures move past the boat.

The next morning (today-Thursday) we pulled anchor to get to Grand Turk. It’s only about 21 nautical miles from way point to way point. The seas started out quite high – perhaps even some good 8 footers. It settled some as the morning went by. The winds were on the nose – but we put the main up to steady the boat. It’s a deep water trip(across Turks Island Passage), so fishing lines went in pretty quickly. We saw some flying fish – so were optimistic about catching something. We had a large pod of small sized dolphins playing with is for some time. It was fun to watch them leap out of the water at the bow – often times three or four at a time in unison. Then Michael spotted a whale spout. We got pretty close to the humpback – which stayed close to the surface and watched it for sometime as we got close to the island.

Fishermen were skunked. Chicken pulled out of the freezer, It took several tries to anchor amidst the reefs at the Front Street anchorage off Grand Turk. There are four sail boats at anchor here as well as one very large motor yacht. Michael dove to check that the anchor was set as it’s getting windier.

There is a small turtle that we keep spotting working around the anchorage. Perhaps if the wind dies a bit we’ll get into the water and do some exploring. We are close enough to shore to row in – but will have to wait until the wind dies a bit.

In Puerto Rico we’ll deal with this motor one way or another. Perhaps a new anchor???