Ryana was full of fuel, water and way too much junk food so we were ready to begin on our second longest leg in our journey yet, about 450nm from Fajardo, Puerto Rico to Provodenciales, Turks and Caicos. All things were in place to look like we were going to have a great journey; winds foretasted to be behind us, mellow seas and a well rested crew.

Day 1

We shoved off from Sun Bay Marina at 0730 and motored for about an hour until our long term course was established. With winds around 160 apparent and remaining fairly steady around 18knts we hoisted the spinnaker and got pulled down wind making about 6knts. All through the day we tried to remain within cell phone range of Puerto Rico as we did not yet have the Turks and Caicos dog import certificate (long story for another post). Diana got through a few times with them making the same promise, ‘You’ll see it in an hour’. Hours past and we eventually had to turn further north and still did not have the document in our hands.

A course change to the north required us to gybe the spinnaker, something we have only done a few times with much lighter wind. Needless to say lessons were learned as Pete and I both ended up with some nice friction burns on our hands. . . Ouch :(.  On a brighter note we got a nice sized Black Fin Tuna that was just right for the three of us for dinner, filled us up and had no leftovers. Come to think of it I don’t think we had leftovers the whole time Pete was with us.

We got into a good groove of two hour shifts that seemed to work well for the 3 days the 3 of us were out there. I believe I have mentioned that our helm is a bit exposed so I like another person in the cockpit during night watches. So we each would rotate through 2 hours on, 2 hours on standby (sleeping in the cockpit) and 2 hours off. As dusk began to fall we dropped the spinnaker and pulled out the jib with one engine keeping our speed above 6knts.

Day 2

As the sun came up we had some coffee and breakfast and rehoisted the spinnaker, which was flown for most of the day. Pete is not getting a fair idea of offshore sailing, this is too darn relaxing, though there is a bit more ship traffic than we are used to. More time was spent trying to get that darn import certificate and we finally had success by using up a lot of sat phone minutes, both by calling the T&C Ag Department and then by downloading a large PDF file. This makes us feel better as we were warned that the T&C can be a pain with a dog. The wind began to shift further south and you could really smell either the DR or Haiti, smelled like grass or field fires. Actually reminded me of college where they would burn the wheat fields every fall, strange to smell that 40 miles from nothing in the ocean. Though we tried, no fish today, in fact we lost all the line on one rod; it was big whatever it was. Pasta and sausage for dinner and we motor sailed into the night.

Day 3

An uneventful first part of the day sailing with jib only making good time, though we could see the wind clocking around on us. Late in the afternoon we could clearly see a front we were approaching. We spoke to a boat that was headed east on the other side and said they saw a few mild squalls with winds in the low 30s. Since night was approaching and the wind turned to be dead on our nose we decided to drop sails and motor directly to weather for the night. This made me feel a bit better as Pete needed to be uncomfortable for part of the trip! Well it didn’t get too bad, mild chop and winds 28-33 with a few gusts poking past 40. Things simmered down later in the night and were fairly calm by morning.

Day 4

Everyone was in good spirits as we’d be making landfall before noon and it wasn’t long until we got on the “banks”  This is our first experience sailing on “banks”; where the depth is between 2 – 20 feet. Obviously we can’t sail in 2 feet of water, but with the water so clear and lack of any real navigational aids you just have to become good at reading the different shades of blue in the water to make sure you don’t run aground. I checked, rechecked and asked the marina owner to check that my waypoints were right and we slowly and carefully made our way through the coral heads.

Pete and Diana were on the bows providing lookout, not so different than she and Brett did in Maine with those damn lobster traps. Initially Diana was calling out every dark spot, but since we were still in 15-20 feet of water those didn’t pose much threat. The last 2 miles into the marina were a bit more scary. Our GPS track looks like a zig zag up to the marina channel, which was just about 5 feet when we came in at low tide; totally fine had a whole 6 inches left! We slid up to the fuel dock unnoticed and immediately like our new home for the week, the South Side Marina run by Bob.