Georgetown to Provo, Turks and Caicos

Held every April, the 57th Family Island Regatta brings much excitement to the  Georgetown area.  Locally built sloops, representing each of the major islands, race competitively and fiercely for the coveted title Best in the Bahamas.  It's a week of parties and festivities.  Food and drink shacks are hastily built on the government docks to handle the influx of people. 

The week before the races, ships arrive in the harbor laden with the participating sloops. These canoe type sloops carry a tall mast and a long boom that sits low in the boat and several feet past the stern. Classes A and B sail only a traditionally made main sail.  Class C carries a head sail as well as a main, both traditionally made.  No light-weight sail cloth adorns these boats.  These boats can go really fast, 20-25 knots for the C class boats.

The end of race week seemed a perfect time for leaving Georgetown, and we had a pretty doable weather window. We left on Sunday, April 25 with plans to stop in Provo and then on to Luperon, Dominican Republic if the weather held.  Doug and Marlene on Solar Eclipse are returning to Florida to take care of necessary engine repairs.  We plan to meet up with them next year in the Eastern Caribbean.  Harry and Linda on the catamaran Kuhala also left that morning but planned to stop in Conception and to make other stops on the way to Provo and then Luperon.  They had the best plan because our forecast did not hold, the wind clocked several times, and the current slowed us down.

Larry gives more detail:
With a nice brisk wind, we sailed north to Cape Santa Maria, Long Island.  As we sailed out of the protection of Long Island, the seas increased and the ride was a little rough.

We sailed east bewteen Conception and Rum to the southeast side of Little San Salvador, but still underneath the island, then slightly S.S.E.  The current slowed us to 3 or 4 knots. After not making very much progress, somewhere around the middle and east of Rum, we tacked ESE and later SW.

We should have gone on south by Rum, because we slowed the same going east. At the southeast corner of San Salvador we turned south, still very slow, toward the bottom of Rum or just before we tacked east.  And the wind was 20 to 24 true from San Salvador. I hailed a ship about our taking a different route so we could get out of the current and he said there's not one. We were going into the waves and it was NO FUN. We tacked and headed to west of Samana and even though we still had a lot of wind and slow going it was a much smoother ride. This was Monday morning. The wind went down later to 15 to 18. We passed Samana; then 32 kts hit us in a wind change from north or west, maybe northwest, with just a little rain. The good thing was we picked up from 2 and 3 kts to 7+ kts. About an hour later the wind had subsided to between 12 and 14.  We talked to another ship about that time and he said they had experienced 42 kts true, but we never had high wind again.

We had a nice sail across the top of Acklins and Plana Cays then S.E. to Mayaguana.

Tuesday afternoon, we anchored just inside the cut in Abraham's Bay, Mayaguana. We left at 11:30 p.m. that night in very light wind of 5kts but it picked up to 10 or 12 after daylight. Wednesday morning around 10:00 a.m. we entered the Sandbore Channel and, using the waypoints from the Wavyline chart, sailed the rumline with a rising tide and no coral head problems. We anchored in Sapodillo Bay; Thursday morning at high tide, we moved to Southside Marina, a great marina with a great staff. 

We plan to leave the boat in the marina in Provo while we return to Oklahoma for a while.  When we return, we'll check out the beaches and other sights.  And we'll post pictures and stories about the beautiful Turks and Caicos.