Every expedition’s worst nightmare is failure to accomplish the mission due to inclement weather. This consideration played an important part in planning our project for 2008. Although some of the reviewers of our original OE proposal questioned the wisdom of splitting our charter time between investigations in two widely-separated areas, our experience in the past taught us that you must always have a “Plan B.” Strong winds from the east or even a tropical storm well out in the Atlantic, would prevent us from working on the north coast of East Caicos, where our primary objective, the Spanish slave ship Trouvadore (lost 1841) lies. For this and other reasons we included a request for permission to search for two US Navy ships known to have been wrecked on or near Providenciales’ Northwest Reef in our application to the Turks and Caicos Department of Environment and Coastal Resources. Although the reef itself is shallow and usually wave-swept, we knew we could conduct a survey there in almost any weather working from small boats, while our mother ship lay safely moored in calm, deep water less than a mile away in the lee of Providenciales. |