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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saint Lucia - Sint Maarten - 23rd - 26th April 2015 SHAKEDOWN

Image
Saint Lucia – Sint Maarten 23 rd – 26 th April 2015 3 days in St. Lucia and we worked very hard while there – the genoa halyard was very difficult to re-wind onto the drum, with all three of us putting our  heads together, Adam and I dismantling the lower drum several times – all of us taking turns to read and attempt to understand why we kept getting it wrong.  Now and again I think that I might be dyslexic, this was one of those times – no matter how many times we re-wound the furling line onto  that drum it was backwards. Debra and I working on sewing the sun strip back on the genoa We got it on eventually,  and furled and unfurled it while on our mooring and all seemed well – It wasn’t, it plagued us throughout the rest of the trip – we were constantly reefing and unreefing it – the unreefing was the problem and I broke another rule I usually adhere to – ‘if you have to use brute force to make something work, something’s obviously wrong and you have to stop
Read more

March 31st - Grand Cayman - Very Welcoming

Image
Its hard to believe that we've been here 4 days. It is very strange to go from Spanish speaking latin countries where we knew we would get good ceviche and good local beer, because we knew 2 Spanish words, cervesa and ceviche, to Grand Cayman where we are tied up to a mooring just offshore of a Burger King fast food restaurant. I guiltily admit that we have already had 2 burger and fries meals in 4 days. Arriving and checking in here has been such a pleasant experience. The greeting and welcome from the Port Captain was so professional and 'welcoming', the first Port Captain who has welcomed us into their port. The Customs and Immigration Officers came to our boat to fill in the forms, which they brought with them and would have been happy to photocopy our documents if needed, but we already had that taken care of. The 2 officers, a man and a women kept up a lively conversation in patois we had trouble following, but they included us and we had conversations about our teena
Read more

Moored in Sausalito - San Francisco Bay

Image
Eureka is a very nice town/city. It has an old town section which is very picturesque, mostly 'Victorian', 'Edwardian' hotels, business buildings, houses dating back to the late 1800's. Its amazing to walk around the town and think that in its heyday men were still riding the ranges shooting each other - and now it all looks so sedate and very beautiful. There is already the feel of California in the type of shops and the way the young people look. Its hard to describe that look - kinda rasta/hippy/yuppy, dunno - it's alot like San Francisco. We were told that we must see a particular Victorian house - "the most photographed Victorian in the world" - quite the statement, which of course we were cynical about. Because we forgot our map, we were instantly lost but were helped by a friendly barber who knew exactly which building we meant by the description "the most........". He gave us directions and we took off - just a few blocks away - and w
Read more