We woke up just before dawn to the sound of thousands of terns nesting on French Cay.  Overnight this isolated and solitary anchorage had been a little rolly but incredibly quiet. In the morning there was no wind so that the sea’s surface was smooth and crystal clear, almost like glass so that the sand, rocks and grasses on the bottom were perfectly visible.  We saw not only terns but also boobies, sandpipers and a solitary osprey looking for his breakfast. 

French Cay lies on the edge of the Caicos bank and sea bed drops away dramatically from a couple of metres deep to over a thousand forming an underwater ‘wall’. You can see this on the surface as the sea colour turns from an almost milky turquois to deep cobalt blue.  As we left the anchorage a hump back whale gently surfaced from his patrol of the ‘wall’ to give us our first sighting of one of these splendid creatures in these waters.

We then made another, albeit much shorter, northerly crossing of the Caicos Bank to anchor tonight in Sapodilla Bay, Providenciales, Caicos.