Just a short post to let y’all know, our address has changed from “The Bahamas” to “Turks and Caicos”. We arrived at the Turtle Cove Marina on Monday afternoon. It was a 382 nm run from Nassau to here:
– 15 hours to Cat Island
– 8 hours to Sal Salvador
– 6 nights on San Salvador, with a little scuba diving and island exploration (met some GREAT people from Michigan Adventure Diving in Milan, MI on a dive trip – Thanks, Ty, and Kadee, and Betsy, and Suzette, and Steve, and Elaine, and Tom, for welcoming us into your group!)
– 11 hours to Semana
– 11 hours to Mayaguana
– 7 hours to Provo
The last 20 minutes were the most interesting. Provo is protected on its north side by a lot of coral reef, and there’s only one safe route through it. It’s twisty and windy, and at one point, only 30 feet wide (Smartini is 16 feet wide). So the marina sent out a guide boat for us to follow in. Thankfully, we had high tide and no wind, so it was easy, but still a little nerve wracking.
Yesterday (the day after we arrived on really nice seas), the wind kicked up, and the dive boat that shares our marina went out, and came right back in – too rough! Hats off to the Smartini Trip Planning Department for picking a near-perfect three day window for the journey here!
Glad you made it safe and sound – even with bananas on board! Here are a couple of good places to eat when we were in T&C 2 years ago: From my notes, “Grace Bay and the Conch Shack, home of the best cracked conch any of has ever had!” and “Bugaloos! on Discovery Bay to the east of us. We had some good rum drinks (Diplomatico Reserva Exclusiva!), conch salad and coconut shrimp. We sat right on the water with a nice breeze and most of us had fried snapper, whole and filleted.” Also the Conch Farm was really interesting and informative – don’t miss that!
Bob, it’s so funny you wrote that – because as I read it, Fran was looking at the ad for da Conch Shack in the local restaurant guide. Now we HAVE to go! Too bad things are so spread out – it’s going to take a car to see them all, and renting a car for a whole month is $1,200!!! (Or “only” $900 if we agree to 3 months.) But we can bike to a lot of places, and we can rent a car on an as-needed basis for $40 a day, so a couple days a week will let us get everywhere we want to go, in the 3+ months we’re going to be here.