Turks & Caicos - Pine Cay

Pine Cay is between Provo (Providenciales) and North Caicos Islands. To get there, we headed N out the Leeward Channel, the turned NE inside the barrier reef and continued until just before Ft George Cut and Ft George Cay. N of the cut, the water rapidly becomes shallower, too little for Ashling. We tried.

The bay gives good protection from the E tradewinds, but gets rolly with any N component. It is a favorite destination for day charter boats with tourists eager to see the beaches, which are beautiful! So we saw a variety of center consoles, two deck power cats, wooden one-off beachable gaff-riggers, jet skis, etc during the days, all of which disappeared at night. Typically we had no other overnight boats, sometimes one or two.

The beach properties were private or small resorts, but by law the beaches are public. Al's fun to visit are Sand Dollar Bars that appear twice daily with the tides. We did find sand dollars!

Usually, we could find Dreamer, or JoJo, or both nearby. They are wild dolphins that enjoy swimming with people. To the local tour operator's credit, we never saw them feeding the dolphins. There was no need to attract them. It was a trip being in touching distance with an unafraid wild dolphin. Sometimes one of the tour boat operators would call me and ask if I'd seen them that day.

The visit at Pine Cay had a different, slower tempo that we much enjoyed. If the weather was good, I'd head out about a mile to snorkel the reef. One day, I really wanted to go and it kept raining on-and-off. Finally I said "let's just go" and we set off to the outer side of the reef. Too bad it wasn't sunny, it was a good spot. But by the time I resurfaced, it was raining hard, the wind had come up, and I couldn't see Ashling or the reef entrance. I knew a few faintly visible landmarks, so we proceeded with caution, passed through the reef and eventually saw our boat exactly where we expected.Read more