Grand Turk 6th - 9th May 2015

Grand Turk
6th – 9th May

As we approached, kinda limped into Grand Turk we called (as one does) the Harbour Authority to ask if we could go straight to the Town Site as we only wanted to anchor once, while we got all of the earlier described problems dealt with.
A very nice gentleman called us back and said that would be fine, suggested where it would be good for us to anchor and even told us he would wait for us to take us to Customs and Immigration. 
Wow, now that’s hospitality – never been received into a country like that before. But as the saying goes, if it seems too good to be true, it usually is.  The nice gentleman turned out to be the only ‘white’ taxi driver on the island, we didn’t really give a s—t, what color the taxi driver or the taxi is, but it would have been honest for the guy to tell us what he was when he answered our call on VHF.  I did tell him that – he didn’t comment.  The next day I hired him to take us
to get water, take our laundry, buy groceries and find fuel filters.  He drove us all over hells half acre to do these things and charged us U$100.  Next day we found that all of those things, except the fuel filters were within walking distance of our dinghy.  Bastard.

Grand Turk is the capital of Turks and Caicos and it cost quite a bit to get into the country and then a quite a bit more to get out.  They have no facilities at all for cruisers – no marina, no public showers anywhere, one Chandlery who did not have anything that we needed and a few vending machines from which we could fill up our jerry cans and carry them back to the dinghy.
To bring our boat to a dock we would have had to pay for a minimum of 200 gallons of water, and that dock was not suitable for a small sailboat, it was for big ships.

The water front was quite pretty, the snorkeling I liked, especially when I swam back to the
Drop Off – from the 10’ we were anchored in to the edge of a precipice 7000’ deep.  Breathtaking colour blue forever.  Just like little Nemo I was afraid to swim over the edge even though I was floating on the surface.   I had a distinct feeling of vertigo and felt sure I would fall.

Many cruisers stopping in the Turks and Caicos make Providenciales or Provo their destination.
Looking at my charts all I could see around Provo was very shallow water, much less than the 6 ½’ that MoondancerX draws, and if that’s what the chart says I believe it.


Didn’t like Grand Turk much, if I’m by that way again I’ll take my chances with Provo. 

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