Providenciales Update: April 17th
Unfortunately you are not allowed to anchor at Cooper Jacks and there are no good all-weather anchorages here so we are staying at South Side Marina. We will check out of the country ( that will make a total of $565 in fees paid to come and go here) and stage at anchor the day before we are ready to head on to Ocean World. As it looks now we and our buddy boat, Zehpyr, agree that we are just going to enjoy it here till the end of the month when Chris Parker is predicting a huge lull in the weather for the whole area. It is expensive here, but neither of us want any more drama and the trip to Luperon can be a challenging one in all but the best conditions.
Zephyr skipped Mayaguana as they also were not digging the rough conditions and headed straight on to Providenciales on a more northerly heading and ended up at Turtle Cove Marina on the north side of the island. They will have to spend an extra day to come back around and stage here at Sapodilla bay when we get our window. They also had a really hard time with customs and agriculture over their dog as neither of us had planned to check in here and had not done the "proper forms" ahead of time.
For a country whose main source of income is tourism they are far from being cruiser friendly.
**I would like to say on that note that Bob here at South Side and Mr. Samuels of Customs were wonderful. They are trying to help bridge this cap with cruisers and make things consistent and easier.

Two other boats just left yesterday. Cathy and Terry (and friend Andy) on Pajarito left for Miami with a Captain to help them just head across towards Cuba and up in one long leg. They had a very tumultuous offshore trip from Puerto Rico in the same seas we lost our engine in. We wish them a safe journey and hope to keep in touch.

Another boat, Megerin, with Sandy and Ray also headed out with a Captain, but the other way. They decided to head down to French Cay and keep on going along the Molasses bank the whole way to Luperon. We are concerned for them and hope they arrive safely. It was not what we would call a weather window and would expect them to see some high seas and winds.

Everyone seems to have their own idea on what a "window" is. We are following Van Sants idea of 5 and 15 ( no more that 5 foot seas and 15 knot winds). It seems to be the rule that the seas are always bigger and the winds higher than predicted. Often times they not only don't recede as predicted but increase. This is what happened on our last leg from Mayaguana and it was horrible.
Wave predictions are an average of 2/3rd the height of the waves take every 13 seconds I believe. So 2 to 4 foot seas can expect to have 5 to 7 footers thrown in with an occasional "where the hell did that come from" one.
There are also the effects of the land masses, the topography of the ocean floor which can cause seemingly mysterious current, overall swell that builds with wind driven seas on top of that, etc.
Now all we need is to add in some squalls and thunderstorms with 30 to 60 knot winds and we are having fun!!