Back to the Island!

We enjoyed a great week stateside with Ally and some of Ron's family, boating on the ICW with family and friends in Tingum, sharing Thanksgiving festivities and enjoying family recipes. We ate enough turkey to last a lifetime (at least it wasn't ground turkey!) and accomplished most of the necessary errands, tasks and correspondence to exhaust ourselves. Now though, we are back aboard Equinox, and are back to the island once again!

Monday was an early-to-rise travel day, so we didn't do much after our arrival but stow our things, tidy up the boat a bit and reconnect our replacement Bose media center unit. Since we had carefully labeled all the wires when disconnecting the old unit, it was fairly easy to reconnect everything, but...the color on the TV was off when we tested the system. Everything was blue tinged with magenta! Fearing we'd received a faulty unit, we called Bose customer service (with more than a bit of trepidation) but thankfully, the tech walked us though a few simple setting checks to return the color to normal. Whew!! We now have TV and music in the salon again!! Yay!

Ron getting our scuba gear assembled for diving

Tuesday morning was bright and sunny, albeit breezy, so Ron and I took Eclipse out to West Caicos for a lovely morning dive. We anchored in the sand near the edge of the reef, and enjoyed meandering our way along the coral wall with its gorgeous vertical vista in the depths. Lots of bushy black coral, barrel sponges and different rope sponges, and again, the huge schools of reef fish of all sizes and color, along with a single reef shark that cruised by to check us out. Great dive! I spied a spotted moray hanging out under a ledge on our return loop back to the boat too; it's the first one I've seen since we've been diving here this trip. 

View of Split Rock as we headed out to dive

After the dive we enjoyed a beach picnic in the sunshine, reveling in the warmth. We both were rather chilled after the dive, so opted not to do a second dive. It took us a bit of time to slog our way back to the marina; winds were whipping out of the east at 20 knots or so, and the waves on the bank kept slamming us on the nose. (I'm glad I brought one of my rain jackets for the ride back, because the spray from the waves had us soaked!) We took a break from the thumping the waves were giving us and tucked in at Pirates Cove on the west end of Providenciales to walk the beach for a bit. It was a smart decision: a gorgeous, deserted bit of beach, with all sorts of tumbled stones, driftwood, the occasional shells and broken bits of coral, although nary a piece of sea glass. So many beaches to beachcomb, so little time!

The stretch of beach at Pirates Cove