Grace Bay is five kilometres of sand on the north shore of Providenciales, in the Turks and Caicos, and the reef a kilometre and a half out made every grain of it. There is no dark volcanic rock on these islands to muddy it, so the sand stays white and cool underfoot. That reef does a second job as well. It takes the Atlantic swell a kilometre and a half offshore, so you can walk straight out from anywhere on the beach, pass the last swimmers and still be standing chest-deep on firm sand, with nothing pulling at your legs.
The bay faces north, so the sun never goes down over the water ahead of the sand. It slides away down the length of the shore to your left, and the whole bay turns pink and copper at once. The beach runs unbroken from the Bight to Leeward, and the firm strip at the waterline walks easily in the early cool. Go east and the resorts thin out until the only footprints ahead are your own. At the western end is the rare reef you can reach without a boat: you wade in off the sand, follow a line of buoys, and the coral heads start a couple of minutes out. On the right nights after a full moon, small boats go out at dusk to the eastern channels, cut their engines, and wait until the water fills with green sparks. The captains read the moon and the tide, and they say themselves it is never a promise. One of the animals here has legal standing. A wild bottlenose dolphin called JoJo has been coming up to swimmers along this shore since the early 1980s, alone and by his own choice. In 1989 the government made him a National Treasure by law. His fame kept captive dolphin pens out of these islands for years.