West Caicos
SY Cookielicious
Private
Wed 1 May 2013 18:16
72:28.29W
It is nice to be still. We anchored on the West side of West Caicos Island just after 18:00, after yet another day of light winds (SE 12-14) and motor sailing. Still enough swell though. Most of the day we motor sailed along the Caicos bank, a shallow bit of water with sand on the bottom, which creates those lovely postcard picture turquoise waters. Above it a light blue reflection in the clouds from the sea - very special effect. It sounds rather romantic those Turks & Caicos Islands, but maybe, when you zoom in enough on the Google map you can see that they are highly overrated. It is nothing more than a bunch of sand dunes sticking out just above the sea with shrub on them. We have been here years before and even made landfall in several places. Not impressed. However: the water is clear as glass and it is nice to see some land for a change, no matter how unimpressive. We dropped the anchor in 15 meters of water and could see it land on the bottom. We celebrated being on the hook with a beer - amazing how one beer can have such an effect after only a few days at sea without any.
We will continue early tomorrow morning, after a full night's sleep (luxury!!). The weather files we pull in by email don't mention anything about the trough and possibly squally weather that the local forecaster is on about. Even he does not know exactly where these squalls will be. He does know that north of the trough there lie nice Easterly winds for us. So we will see when we get in the squalls - and keep going through, no doubt Cookie will handle them nicely. 455 Nm covered so far.
Cheers,
Geoff & Merel