January 17, 2025

About Grand Turk:

Grand Turk Island is the capital island of the Turks and Caicos archipelago, in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s dotted with the remains of salt ponds and windmills from the island’s sea salt industry, prevalent from the 17th to 20th century. The 19th-century Grand Turk Lighthouse is perched on a rocky bluff in the north. Beaches with clear water ring the island, which is home to wild horses and donkeys.

The only town, and this sounds rather painful, is Cockburn Town and has a few shops here and there (mostly ‘there’, not ‘here’) but the beachline from the beginning of (ouch again) Cockburn Town is filled with shops and bars, really cute. The ships dock at the far southside of the island

The ships dock right at the nicest beach of the island and therefore….relax. As you can see, two of our Holland America Line vessels docked side by side in Grand Turk.

The most popular thing to do, besides chillin’ out on the playa, is to rent a golf cart and to explore the island. You can easily drive from the far southside to the northern most point of the island to visit the famous lighthouse, a true landmark here.

Or you can skip the golfcart part and just run to the lighthouse.

I’ve done this several times and never gets boring. But, one thing I never did, was run to the lighthouse, turn around, run to the entrance of the river that flows into the ocean and swim across in order to run back to the ship. Today I did and it was awesome and stressful at the same time: The current at low tide is so strong (4 knots) that you get dragged into the ocean real fast and thus you need to make sure you get into the water about 1000ft away from the entrance to the ocean, this will give you a minute or 2 to swim with the current to the other side of the river.

This is the area where I crossed the river> It looks calm but the current is extremely strong at low tide when the water from the wide river is flowing back through the narrow opening towards the ocean

The total distance is 23.5km or 14.6 miles

All in all, a great day for a great run