Grand Turk

When you bring a private yacht into the Turks and Caicos (T&C), you have to decide whether to temporarily import the vessel for up to 7 days (cost US$100 – US$50 on arrival and US$50 on departure) or for up to 3 months (cost  US$300 – US$50 on arrival and US$250 on departure) [Ed: in contrast, the people on board the yacht can stay for up to 3 months with no charge]. Ideally, we would have wanted to stay for about 2 weeks but the cost wasn’t worth it for the additional time. And, unfortunately, T&C Customs count the days of the yacht’s visit as calendar days (not, as we had hoped, 24hr periods) with your arrival day being day 1 and your departure day being, say, day 7.  We had arrived on Monday 21 January so our day 7 was Sunday 27 January.  Clearly, this brought with it the added complication of our having to check out on a weekend with the commensurate out of hours charge.

Anchored off Grand Turk cruise ship pier (ahead of BV).  Note the many bars lining the beach and the plethora of sunbeds and beach umbrellas. It seems that many cruise ship visitors do their Grand Turk beach stop here, no distance from their floating hotel. To be fair, it is a beautiful sand beach and the water is a fabulous colour, it’s just that it’s backed by the island’s generating station and right next to the commercial dock

A green turtle welcoming us to the anchorage

Our book on the Bahamas states that Customs and Immigration at Grand Turk are located close to the cruise ship dock, about 3nm up the coast from where we were anchored.  Since we would be sailing past this part of the island en routeto Great Inagua we decided to move BV, rather than take a very long, hot walk.  It was an uneventful motor  along the coast into a 15kt southeasterly wind, though the day was very much a tale of 2 anchorages.  We left a flat calm anchorage, well protected by the reef and the lie of the island, and found the recommended anchorage for access to Customs and Immigration exposed with a good sized swell rolling through it (unsurprising I suppose given that this anchorage is almost on the southeastern tip of the island).  Getting the engine onto the dinghy to go ashore was ‘interesting’ and the beach landing had potential for being very wet, though we managed to time the approach through the waves OK and ran the dinghy, on its wheels, pretty much straight up the beach.

BV as viewed from the shore.  Note the colour change in the water from pale yellow-blue (under 2m deep), through turquoise (3-8m deep), to deep blue (20m+ deep).  Here the drop-off from 8m deep to about 20m is very abrupt.  We dropped the anchor in 8m but BV’s stern was in about 15m

There was no cruise ship on the quay (a shame, as the anchorage would have been a lot more protected had there been one in) and the beach bars, presumably bustling on a cruise ship day, were all closed up with no-one in sight.

Left and top right: We saw a small group of donkeys wandering along the edge of the road as we waited for the Customs and Immigration officers.  Bottom right: our local shadow

We wandered through the bars to the main road (dusty tarmac, one car, lots of donkeys) picking up a shadow (stray dog) on the way.  There was absolutely no sign of Customs or Immigration, which were supposed to be in this area, and we were beginning to feel somewhat at a loss as to where to go next. Happily, we then saw a lone workman busy fixing a long line of screening material to a fence, presumably to disguise the fact that the buildings on the other side of the fence were still ruined following the 2017 hurricane.

The new Customs and Immigration post at the commercial dock

The workman pointed us further down the road to the commercial dock complex and after a 5min walk we arrived at the entrance to the dock and the brand new Customs warehouse (no mistaking that!). There was no-one in, despite the fact that there was a commercial vessel loading on the freight quay.  Happily, there was a duty officer in the commercial port’s gatehouse and she called the duty Customs officer for us.  We waited in the shade of a tree for about 30min, thanking our lucky stars that we had fortuitously chosen to check out just as a freighter was finishing loading.  Had we been an hour later perhaps the port’s duty officer would have been away from the office, contactable only by telephone.  When we had checked in at South Caicos, the impression we had received was that there were Customs and Immigration officers at their posts every day of the week.  Perhaps that is the case in South Caicos but it isn’t in Grand Turk.  Next time we will get contact telephone numbers in case we need to leave out of hours.

The next slight shock was the out of hours charge.  We had expected to pay an additional US$15 to check out out of hours.  What we hadn’t realised was that we needed to pay US$15 to each of the Customs officer andthe Immigration officer…..  Paperwork and payments complete (and we had to wait by the tree again for the Immigration officer as the Customs officer was keen to do her bit in the office and then hightail it off to church) we took a little more of a wander along the road towards the airport.

Friendship 7 – John Glenn’s splashdown capsule

Outside the airport is a memorial to one of the big events in T&C history – the splashdown of John Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule on 20 February 1962 in the waters off the T&C. Depending on the book you read the capsule on display might be the original or a replica.  Either way it’s very small.  It looks enormous in the photos but in reality it is just big enough for a person.  I can’t say I’d fancy being cooped up in that in freefall through the atmosphere but I suppose that the size of your craft is irrelevant at that point, provided that you get through alive.  Brave people, astronauts.

As part of the Mercury space programme, John Glenn (Lt Col) was launched into space from Cape Canaveral and became the first American to orbit the earth, doing so three times in about 5 hours. Having been recovered from the sea by the USS Noa, and transferred to the USS Randolph, Glenn was brought to Grand Turk for a medical and a debrief before being flown back to America accompanied by US Vice President Lyndon B Johnson.  Grand Turk is understandable proud of the part it played in the space race and, until relatively recently, still had a substantial American presence on the island in 2 separate locations, both related to NASA’s space programme – one of the perks of being a rocket scientist?

Governor’s Beach [Ed: estate agent photos – there’s a large rusting wreck of a freighter on the beach, just out of shot!]

Returning towards the dinghy we spotted a sign for Governor’s Beach a beach behind a building that had, at one point, clearly been the Governor’s residence on the island.  We had some time to spare so we thought that we’d take a look and were rewarded with a beautiful beach [Ed: complete with rusting wreck of a freighter, out of shot].

Back to the dinghy for a propane cylinder refill run

As we retraced our steps to the main road, Nicky spotted what looked to be a propane bottle filling station, with several people gathered around chatting and drinking beer…….and with a powerful smell of propane on the air.  We had a nearly empty propane bottle on BV.  Would they, could they, refill it for us?  It became clear that the team was working on a problem with the filling apparatus (hence the powerful smell of propane?) and that they had nearly finished the job (hence the beers?) but if we could get the bottle to them within about 45min, it could be filled.  So, we trotted back to the dinghy at the double, zoomed out in the dinghy, picked up the cylinder and hightailed it back to Governor’s Beach.  There was much less swell here than on the beach on which we had previously landed and it is closer to the new Customs and Immigration post than the other beach too.  Definitely one to be noted for the future.  By the time we had returned to the filling station, the beers had been sunk more deeply and the all-pervading smell of propane was noticeably reduced too. In less than a minute our cylinder was replenished and with profuse thanks (they refused payment) we were ready to return to BV and ready for an early afternoon departure to Great Inagua, 130nm to the southwest.

Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands