The Thorny Path

Travelling by sailboat from Florida to the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean is called the "thorny path" to the Caribbean. It has this name because it entails travelling about 950 miles southeast straight into the trade winds. That is a long, long way to go upwind.

One way to do this is the offshore route. You depart Florida, swing north of the Bahamas and head east until you are due north of the Virgin Islands. Once you have made your easting, you can turn south and enjoy a beam reach into the Virgin Islands. Since you're already quite far south, most of this trip requires beating into the upper edges of the trade winds to make your way east.

If you have the time, a more enjoyable (and marriage-preserving) route is to island hop. You make your way through the Bahamas, take a short passage to the Turks and Caicos, and then a longer one to Puerto Rico, sometimes via the Dominican Republic. Once in Puerto Rico, you have short day sails as you coast along the south side of Puerto Rico and on into the Virgin Islands. It sounds straight forward, but there are a few prickly thorns in that route as well.

The first part of the journey is pretty easy, and only requires one or two overnight passages. We sailed from Miami to Bimini, then on to the Exumas where we spent a fair amount of time. From the Exumas we sailed to Rum Cay, in the out islands of the Bahamas.

Once you get as far south as Rum Cay, you have dipped your toe into the trade winds, which blow with remarkable consistency from the East. At the same time, you are leaving behind the many sheltered anchorages of the Bahamas, and the short daylight passages they provide. Ahead of you lay larger stretches of open ocean.

The solution is to take advantage of cold fronts rolling off of the southeast coast of the US that tend to stall just south east of the Bahamas. These cold fronts tend to shut down the trade winds between the Bahamas and the Virgins, providing a weather window in which you can motor or motor-sail to the next staging anchorage in light easterly winds. If you time it right, you can enjoy gentle rollers, light easterly winds of under 15 knots and wind waves under 3 feet on the nose. Without these windows, you are faced with head winds over 20 knots and steep eight foot or more seas on the nose. A recipe for broken boats and very unhappy crew (meaning, a furious wife).

Our passage from Rum Cay to the Turks and Caicos was our first leg in this difficult portion of the Thorny Path. We left Rum Cay after a whopper of a cold front blew through. There were 8-10 foot rollers on our beam, but they were gentle and spread out. The wind and associated wind waves had laid down and we had a pleasant first half of the passage. By midnight, however, the wind picked up on our nose and we ended up pounding for several hours until we found ourselves in the lee of the Turks and Caicos. We probably would have waited a few days for a longer window, but we were very eager to catch up with our friends on Oceana, who were already in the Turks and Caicos.

The entrance to the Caicos Bank is a 200 foot wide cut called the Sand Bore Channel. It is the only access to the well protected Caicos Bank from the west. Passing through the channel, we left behind the deep blue ocean and found ourselves in 10 feet of beautiful turquoise water as far as the eye could see. It was an astounding change.

The Turks and Caicos are a part of the British Commonwealth and are located south east of the Bahamas and about 80 miles due north of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). The Caicos islands and cays surround the Caicos Bank, which is a very flat plateau resting about 3 to 15 feet below the water and is sprinkled very liberally with coral heads and shoals. The Turks lie 50 miles to the east of the Caicos Islands, separated by ocean water over a mile deep.

We were excited to be in the Turks and Caicos. Friends, miles of beaches, and world renowned diving awaited us.