And so the day came and went, having fun in the shallow
clear waters of South Caicos, collecting sand dollars and thinking wistfully of
the times when shells were money. Aaah …if
only, we said, that cruising would raise money instead of just costing a lot…
Brent, Andrew and the children returned with their treasures
and we came aboard to plan our route through the Caicos Banks which are
notorious for their shallow waters and coral heads. Brent unfortunately had a very sore foot due
to a gout attack and Andrew’s Raymarine charts were rather limited in
information (hmmnnn…. Just a deep blue with nothing on it!) so I thought it was probably best I applied
myself to planning this dangerous crossing.
Our guide books were detailed especially ‘The Cruising Guide
to the Southern Bahamas’ by Stephen Pavlidis, which starts the chapter on the Caicos Banks with
NEVER CROSS THE CAICOS BANKS AT NIGHT! Then proceeds with a summary of all the
boats who got into trouble due to careless navigation. OK, I was now awake even though the hour was
late and I had been up since five in the morning.
From Long Cay, behind which Cockburn Harbour
sits, there is a channel to South Dock Providenciales called the Long Cay Channel. You basically start at waypoint 21.26.8 N,
71.34.0 W on a heading of 293 degrees True for 41.4 miles. Easy enough?
Well the guide said, only take this channel if a. your draft is less than 1m50 as you cross the
bar at high tide, b. you are in for adventure and like a challenge and c. you cannot take the other two channels due to
the fact conditions do not allow you to take the other two channels.
Reflecting on these words, I thought that probably navigating
with a skipper with gout would be enough of a challenge, not to speak
about how Andrew was going to cross a bar without adequate charts.
So I looked at the two other channels, the Pearl Channel and
the Starfish Channel. The latter is the safest one and takes one
from Ambergris Cay 21.30.25 N, 72.06.75 W on a bearing of 134 degrees to get to
the Sapodilla Bay after 43.8 nm. This
channel goes through relatively deep water, not less than 9 feet or 2.7 metres
and passes south of the bar in the middle of the Caicos Banks. The course
changes slightly at way point 31.30.25N, 72.06.75 W to a bearing of 154 degrees.
This would have been nice had we changed our anchorage
earlier in the day to Ambergris Cay, which is depicted as a nice place in guide
books with its colony of 2000 rock iguanas. However it was too late to sail now
and too far to go tomorrow morning.
This left us with the Pearl
Channel which is the middle channel for crossing the banks. The shallowest point is 7 feet or 2.1 metres
according to the paper charts we bought in St Martin (Caribbean Yachting
Charts) but in fact the Raymarine charts were more accurate with a depth at
chart datum of 1.6 metres or just over 5 feet.
Therefore it is crucial that you pick your departure in good light and
with a rising tide, which is going to be at its highest as you cross the banks. We use the App Tidemaster on our Ipad, which
is very accurate to know the tides. Alternatively
there is a good trick mentioned to me:
At full and new moon, in the Bahamas and TCI, high tide is at 8.00 am
and 8.00 pm and every day after this moon phase, one adds an hour to know the
high tide time. It is obviously an
approximation but it seemed to be fairly accurate. The tidal difference is about 1 meter.
Unfortunately, the start of the Pearl Channel from Cockburn
Harbour is located at waypoint 21.19.75 N, 71.39.75 W which lies amongst coral
heads and rocks awash, so we decided to create our own route which is an amalgamation of the Grand Turks Route to West Caicos and the Pearl
Channel. We started from waypoint
21.24.0N, 71.35.0W on the Grand Turk Passage to waypoint 21.24.2N, 71.42.0W on
a bearing of 272 degrees and then went to a waypoint on the Pearl Channel at
21.24.351N, 71.46.78W. From there we
took a bearing of 305 degreees to a waypoint in Sapodilla Bay, 21.44.10N,
72.17.0W.
Photo compliments of Andrew Fehrsen on Champolion .. taken of Impi at sunrise on morning of departure
Morning came all too soon after a very short night and we
left in brilliant sunshine, after Heidi from the Center for Marine Resource
Studies confirmed that the weather was going to be good. Thank you so much Heidi for your generosity
and time! There is no internet
connection on the island for sailors, but Heidi kindly offered her wifi to us
at the centre, located on 1 West Street.
Grib files also confirmed that we should have favourable wind and waves.
And so Impi left
the good people of South Caicos.
I felt nervous and
Brent was in considerable pain, but the beauty of the banks took all that
away. Within a few minutes of being on
the Grand Turks passage we had to turn sharply for lobster nets. Interestingly they had three buoys on them, connected
by a black floating line and only at the last moment did I see we could not
pass in between. OK that is what you call a tourist trap!
But Brent even with
gout and doped up, is the most fantastic skipper and handled Impi very competently
around the lines. Next we saw these dark patches on the very blue sea. We guessed that these were the coral heads
and even though we were bang on the channels recommended, we soon noticed that
these are not straight lines but merely guidelines with lots of brain coral
heads which one has to avoid. It became
apparent that good light to do this crossing is essential as when a cloud
obscured the sun we could no longer see the coral patches, which was quite
scary. We dropped way points on all the coral patches, so should you wish to obtain these, send an email to cat-impi@hotmail.com.
The beauty of the
Caicos Banks is unbelievable. Emerald
water reflected off the bottom of the clouds, but only barracudas were biting
our lures. It made me think a bit of a
desert, but a seawater desert stretching in a circle around us, no land in
sight.
Photo taken by Andrew Fehrsen from Champolion ... of Impi crossing the Caicos Banks
There is no way one
can navigate these waters on auto pilot and Brent and Andrew had to hand steer
the boats across the banks for much of the way.
Due to the high
tide being at 2.30 we continued through to the other side of the bar and
anchored at 4 pm for the night at way point 21.38.87N, 72.03.93W in 3.1 meters
of water.
We had aimed to
anchor out of the line of sight of land, but in fact we could see the lights of
Providenciales on the horizon.
The following
morning we continued on our journey to Sapodilla Bay in good light where we
arrived without any hiccups some 3 hours later and anchored in 3 metres at
21.45.63 N, 72.14.23W.
Providenciales is
an odd place which seems to have suffered from the turn down in the economy
with lots of abandoned developments. It
has good pharmacies and supermarkets, but lacks charts and guide books, so don’t
count on buying your Bahama guides here.
Public transport
seems to be absent, but it is easy to hire a car. Andrew called via sat phone from the boat the
car rental agency Avis (649-946-4705) and they picked the driver up from
Sapodilla Bay.
There is a little road
behind the beach so you just have to dinghy on to the beach. There is no dock, but there is security at
night so your dinghy is fairly safe. Sapodilla Bay gets quite rocky in a NW
wind, and it is best to wear clothes that can with stand the occasional sea water
shower when you go onto shore to go to town…
Provisioning is
easy in the many high quality supermarkets such as IGA, BUT IT IS SOOOOOO
EXPENSIVE. Best to stick to the basics
of eggs ($2.00 for a dozen), fruit (watermelon at $3.00 for a quarter) and
vegetables (tomatoes at $2.00 per pound). We were glad that we had been advised
to stock up prior to our arrival here as many items were about 50% more
expensive than in the BVI.
We had dinner at
the Dive Bar, where there is good food and good wifi. In Sapodilla Bay, there is open wifi, from
somewhere, which was picked up automatically by our antenna and has a good
strength. We were able to download our Bahamian charts onto the Ipad (Navionics App).
We did not explore
the island very much and I know Brent will regret that we did not have time to
dive along the walls of West Caicos. Due
to NW winds, the anchorages along this island are extremely uncomfortable at the moment. So we are due to set sail later today to
Mayaguana where we will check into the Bahamas at Abraham’s Bay.
This means we
have to exit Providenciales' southern waters via the Sandbore Channel which,
yes you have guessed it, needs careful eyeball navigation, due to coral heads
and sand banks.
So long guys, we will
let you know how it all goes, we should arrive tomorrow morning in Abraham’s
Bay!
Photo taken from Impi of Sapodilla Bay
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