Times of the Islands Summer 2021

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The sailing sloops were very important and the fact that there were so many sailors affected the way people spoke. If you lived in Blue Hills you walked up to The Bight. (It was upwind.) I recall one time in the early 1970s when I tried to locate Hilly Ewing, who was the building inspector at the time. Before we had telephones, the best way to locate people was to inquire at the airport. On my question if anybody had seen Hilly somebody answered, “He went up this morning.” He had flown to Grand Turk, which is upwind from Providenciales. One time, at the Third Turtle’s construction site when Alfred Stubbs tried to organize some workers to move a concrete mixer, I heard him saying, “Move the stern.” Alfred had been a sailor all his life, so even a mixer had a bow and a stern. A journey by sloop to Grand Turk from Providenciales was a big event in those days, but all that was soon to change. In the Spring 2021 issue of Times of the Islands, I wrote about the original airstrip on Providenciales. In the beginning, that strip was mostly used by Fritz when he flew to Grand Turk for meetings with the government. In Grand Turk he used what we named the “Downtown Strip,” which was a dirt road just north of St. Thomas Church. According to Dr. Leo Astwood, Frankie Jones from Bermuda, who was the District Commissioner in South Caicos in the 1950s, had a small plane that he used to land there. Dr. Astwood told me, “When I came back home in 1971, Embry was landing there.” The Downtown Strip was conveniently located within a short walking distance of the TCI Government compound. At the time, the main airport in Grand Turk was controlled by the US Government and it was very complicated to obtain a landing permit. Fritz was always very generous when it came to offering free rides if there was a seat available. One time I heard Fritz saying, “There are so many people who want to go to South Caicos and Grand Turk, we might as well start an airline.” Shortly thereafter, Caicos Airways Ltd. (CAL) was formed. This was in 1967 and one important factor was that a man named Lew Whinnery had shown up on the scene. Ray Ward and his construction crew were building the Third Turtle Inn on top of the cliff just south of what today is Turtle Cove Marina. One day they saw a small, single engine sea plane circling the construction site before landing close to the beach in front of them. Soon afterwards, Lew walked up to the construction site. He had flown over Providenciales before and this time, noticed that something was different. Lew asked Ray what he was building and if he needed some help. Ray replied that it This image shows the “Downtown Strip” in Grand Turk. It was a dirt road just north of St. Thomas Church. This picture includes Lew Whinnery’s seaplane. He was en route from South America to the United States, but got delayed in Turks & Caicos for a few years! He was one of CAL’s original pilots. would be a big help if he could fly to South Caicos and bring back a few cases of Heineken beer because they were running low. That is exactly what Lew did, so we knew right away that he was a man with his heart in the right place! In 1967, Heineken was the only beer available in Turks & Caicos. I was told, or read somewhere, that Turks & Caicos held the world record in Heineken drinking per capita. Apparently somebody in an office in Holland who was handling shipping documents got curious and wanted to find out more about the country. (This was before you could Google such information, so he probably had to go to a library to educate himself.) He learned that the total population of Turks & Caicos at the time was 6,000 people. Adding up the amount of Heineken that was shipped out to TIMCO in Grand Turk gave Turks & Caicos the world record. Lew Whinnery was a very experienced pilot and he expressed interest in sticking around in Turks & Caicos for awhile. Embry Rucker, also a pilot, already worked for 18 www.timespub.tc
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Page 1 and 2: TIMES OF THE SAMPLING THE SOUL OF T
Page 3 and 4: JAMAICA’S ULTIMATE VOTED WORLD’
Page 5 and 6: TurksAndCaicosProperty.com 5 Acre M
Page 7: 18 Boathouses are already reserved
Page 11: LEADING THE INDUSTRY IN HEALTH AND
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Page 20 and 21: CAL’s second plane was a Twin Bon
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Page 25 and 26: eye on the sky The Tropical Atlanti
Page 27 and 28: get important messages concerning w
Page 29 and 30: talking taíno Opposite page: Aleja
Page 31 and 32: What better way to keep the Taino k
Page 33: superimposed living surfaces. Large
Page 36 and 37: We chatted with people at Sandy Poi
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Page 47 and 48: feature Opposite page: Robust, funn
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Page 60 and 61: Besides the much-heralded natural b
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astrolabe newsletter of the Turks &
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The TCI has expanded COVID-19 testi
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the country, and there is a recompr
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For Those Who Seek An Exceptional V
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Times of the Islands Summer 2021

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