We left Provo, Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) at 8am on Sunday (May 20) for what was predicted to be a easy wind and sailing day. In addition to Inspiration, Free Fallin & Mandolin also headed out for the same destination.

An hour out we ran into a massive rainstorm with lightning scattered around (none close). After getting out of the rain, the wind was not quite what was predicted - so no sailing. Finally, close to noon, we veered off course by 10 degrees, put up both sails & throttled back to 1 engine at a fast idle (to power the autopilot). That gave us 7kts (about 8.5 mph). (: We held that course for just over 2 hours before we had to drop sail & motor back to our original course. After another hour of motoring against the wind we rounded the south end of Lonf Cay and sailed NE along its eastern shore to the entrance to Cockburn Harbor and South Caicos. We pulled in along the western side of Long Cay about a mile south of the harbor entrance and dropped anchor before 6pm.

We had met another couple at Sapodilla Bay the day before leaving. They are Cynthis & Mike in a Lagoon 42 (catamaran) and they were just ahead of us the whole trip. So we went into the town of South Caicos yesterday - saw most all of it in a couple hours. Although, the sun beats down so hard that we saw several places from a distance & skipped walking around them (including an awesome, huge, deserted house up on a hill overlooking the ocean). The people in S Caicos are all extremely friendly, but it's still rather expensive - $6.50/gal for gas or diesel fuel, $4 for a loaf of home-made bread.

Our next destination is the Dominican Republic - Luperon if we can make it. That's a bit more than 100 miles from here. we can (in theory) sail it IF we get the right winds, so we'll be here for a couple more days waiting for the wind to swing more to the east (from the SE).

The picture is Margi on Long Cay with Inspiration in the background & S Caicos across the water.