COVID-19

Today is the first time in 22 years that we’re not at Arnold’s birthday. We called him at midnight Dutch time so we could still be there a little bit. He’s in Harlingen with Ella, and she has put up the bunting to make it festive.

I’m going to skip a bit for now, but I’ll come back to that in a later post. The thing currently occupying the whole world, the coronavirus, is also affecting our voyage. We’ve now been anchored for a week in a beautiful bay on the north side of Guadeloupe.

https://goo.gl/maps/PstxGyoWzor4fTCc6

The water is gorgeous, there’s no swell, not even when it blows harder, the swimming is lovely and there’s nobody anchored anywhere near us. The first few days the weather was fine and today the sun is shining again, but we’ve just had five days of rain. The bimini (the sun awning over the cockpit) catches it, which gives us a glorious rain shower and extra drinking water, sometimes as much as 30 litres. We’ve now positioned the dinghy on deck so that it channels all the water towards the water tank. We’re not short of anything. We’re doing fine. Under the French rules one person is allowed out for shopping, so every now and then Kees goes ashore for fresh bread. Last time the supermarket was well stocked again, and we definitely still have plenty of toilet paper!

So what’s the situation otherwise? We can’t go anywhere. Most islands no longer allow boats in. We’re in France, where it’s even officially forbidden to sail a pleasure craft. That makes our plans to sail to Curaçao and leave the boat on the hard there for the hurricane season uncertain. We do understand it: most of the boats sailing around here are charter boats with a new crew every two weeks. A boat with two Italians on board was already sent away from Antigua two weeks ago. But if we’ve got corona, we caught it here.

We’ve joined a Facebook group of Dutch boats in the Caribbean, set up specifically for all the sailing hassle surrounding corona. Even though most cruisers left Europe ages ago, they’re sometimes treated as the bringers of evil. There are stories of dinghies being slashed by locals. A Norwegian boat with a five-year-old child on board was turned away in Curaçao; they were even threatened with being towed back out to sea, while they didn’t have enough provisions on board. That has since been put right and they’ve been allowed in under conditions, namely 14 days of quarantine. Which, of course, is no problem at all on your own boat. We hear stories of boats being cast off their moorings. It’s bizarre, it feels like wartime.

In the meantime a couple has taken the initiative and contacted the various authorities, asking Curaçao to let Dutch cruisers in after all. We’re hoping that works out; otherwise we’ll need a plan B, which could be sailing to America, where boats are being allowed in, but then we’d have to sort out a visa again. Or sail all the way back home, but that’s quite a long way.

Right, we’ll just sit tight for now. In the meantime we keep ourselves busy with work for Redwood (Kees), swimming, reading, games, a movie and, when the weather’s nice, a nap in the hammock!

Lots of love from us, and stay healthy!