Passage to the Turks & Caicos

Our Mahi doesn't fit into the cooler!

We dropped our lines at the very unexciting Exumas Docking Services docks in George Town, Great Exuma and headed out the notoriously tricky southeast channel. We were looking at about a 35-hour run to get to Providenciales in the Turks & Caicos before the forecast rough weather socked us in.

After clearing the Exuma reef opening, we set our course to take us past the tip of Long Island (Cape St. Marie) and on past Rum Key, Cat Island, Little San Salvador, Samana, Acklins, Crooked Island, Mayaguana, and finally, across the Caicos Passage to Provo (Providenciales), the major island in the Turks & Caicos chain, where we would stage for the big crossing to the Dominican Republic.

We really had planned to spend a night at Rum Cay. Why? Because we hadn’t been there, of course - and because, well, who DOESN'T want to visit a place called Rum Cay?  But, because we were running a bit behind schedule we decided to try to make it all the way to Provo in one shot. Plus, our weather router was telling us that we had fair cruising weather until Saturday night, then everything was going to go bad for the better part of a week. We definitely didn’t want to become stranded on some no-name cay without working phones, computers, 50-amp power, or nice bars.  Now, our weather router, Chris Parker, was also telling us that we should plan our route to pass NORTH of the Samana Cays in order to avoid some forecast higher seas, but, again, I ignored his advice and charted the much more direct course, which would take us SOUTH of Samana.

At first, the weather was pretty benign – 2’-3’ sea quartering on the bow and a nice gentle ride. But, about one in the morning, the seas just past Acklins started to pick up - right about where Chris told us they would.  So we dealt with a harsh ride right into the teeth of the seas for the rest of the night, with the wind and waves dying down just a bit at daybreak.  However, as Chris warned, the rest of the passage would turn out to be anything but comfortable.  Next time, I vow to heed the advice of our professional weather router!

We had excellent luck with our fishing, however:  Just past the tip of Long Island, we caught a nice, big Wahoo. We took some pictures and reluctantly released him back in to the sea. I just couldn’t figure out how we were going steak this big fish with the tiny knives we had aboard the boat. Plus, Wahoo doesn’t keep very well and freezing it doesn’t help the flavor either – what we were really looking for was that elusive Mahi Mahi.


Decided to throw this beautiful Wahoo back...

So, Fred changed from our red and black Wahoo Slayer lure to a pink Mahi lure and a couple hours later he horsed a very nice 15 lb. cow aboard. The fish sure made a mess of the cockpit with all the thrashing, but I finally got it into a cooler of ice for a while so I could gut, skin and filet the now dead fish. We ended up with 10 substantial filets and bagged them in threes, kept one bag out for dinner in Provo and froze the rest. We were done fishing for this trip!

We only saw a couple boats on our journey– three sailboats passed very closely to us just before midnight and were gone into the night. But we did log quite a bit more cool wildlife. The phosphorescence in the water that was stirred up by our bow wake was phenomenal. It truly looked like the frothy, churning wave was on fire. Beautiful.

Then, about halfway across the Caicos Passage, we passed a large school of black Pilot Whales. Alas, it was so rough and we were so mesmerized by them, by the time we got a camera out they were gone and past us. They were followed closely by a big shark (Oceanic White Tip, I think) that swam right under our bow in the crystal clear water.

Lastly, as we approached Provo, a school of tiny porpoises surrounded us. I am not positive of the species (pretty sure that they were Harbor Porpoises) – but they were cute as hell.

Back to our travels: As we passed to the south of Mayaguana, the seas notched up to about 4’ or so. Still very doable, if a little uncomfortable, but as we passed the tip of Mayaguana this afternoon and entered the 35-mile-wide Caicos Passage, the wind piped up and we were getting rocked continuously by 6’ beam seas. Ugh. Falling off to port or starboard would have worked okay, but we didn’t have time. We needed to be at the entrance to the very tricky, coral head-strewn, mile-long channel into Turtle Cove Marina on the north shore of Provo before they closed at 6pm so they could send a pilot boat out to guide us through the coral.

So, we were stuck dealing with really uncomfortable beam waves for about 5 hours. Let me tell you, these babies were flat rocking our world. We were all really ready when it was finally time to dock, check in with Customs, have a few coldies (wait, no, the coldies came RIGHT after docking), shower, and pay the local marina rats to wash the salt off of Sea Glass for us.

We cooked up a mess of those very fresh Mahi filets along with some baked potatoes and salad. A veritable feast. Now it’s off to the Tiki Bar here at the marina for a beer - maybe two, but we are all completely exhausted, so it might just be the one this time!