Leaving Turks and Caicos

Navigation, in the main, had previously been fairly straightforward. Assuming the wind is on your side, which it had been the majority of the time, set a course and deviate a little to take advantage of the wind direction. We had navigated around the Turks and Caicos bank and engaged the marina pilot to get through the cut on the way in to avoid what’s known as visual piloting. Now we had to bite the bullet and plan when we left, when we arrived, and when we were going across the shallow banks so we hit optimum light conditions – generally between 8 or 9 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon. We decided to leave T&C at around 5 pm -- a little bit out of the window -- because apart from the cut, there weren’t any other obstacles to navigate. This would mean we might have to hang around outside San Salvador for a couple of hours till it was light enough to navigate their cut and marina, but was the best compromise we could come up with.
The pictures show the breakers on the right and left of the cut as well as my scary bug eyed glasses that help me see well enough to give everyone a 10 second warning before we ground!!