We left Conception Thursday 11/27/14 with the promise of winds and seas laying down mid day. We rounded on Rum Cay with strong winds and short choppy seas, not very comfortable. Ed was almost ready to stop off at Rum Cay and wait for better weather. We forged on and within an hour, the wind and the seas calmed down and we had a decent passage. We arrived at the entrance to Mayaguana early afternoon and since we still had a good weather window, we decided to head out before dark and make an overnight passage to Provo in the Turks & Caicos (TCI). It wasn't a long passage but we didn't want to pick our way out of the channel entrance at night so we left before it got dark and slowly sailed (yes we actually got to sail a good part of the way). We arrived in TCI early. The officials can see you coming from a long way away. We were still 10-12 miles out and they were hailing us on the radio, wanting to know all sorts of things about the boat and crew. Once we set the anchor, we took the dinghy to South Dock where we had to beach the dinghy to clear customs. Not even a dinghy dock and this is no third world country either. We anchored for 2 nights, then made our way to South Side Marina so we could enjoy the town. South Side Marina should not be missed. Great cruiser marina and now they have Bob's Bar at the top of the hill. We met up with Bob and Stacy on High Heeled (met them in Georgetown) and together we rented a car for a few days. The north coast was spectacular. There are a lot of resorts with great restaurants. We went to a Tex/Mex place called "Somewhere". It was fun hanging out at the bar upstairs and when the rain came, we took our food and drinks and went downstairs to the bar.
We did some reprovisioning in Provo at AGI (a large grocery store). And I thought the Bahamas was expensive. A box of cereal was $10 as was a 12 pack of coke. We got the cereal but not the coke.
We have another good weather window opening up on Saturday 12/6 that we will take advantage of and motor thru TCI and stage at Big Sandy Cay for our crossing to the DR. If the weather forecast is correct, we will be in the DR Monday.