One week to go before we get out of jail

For the past 7 days, we have been confined to the dock behind this pad-locked gate. This is how they greet travelers in St. Lucia, who have returned to get their boat. We are able to provision food through the local Marketplace and restaurants willing to deliver to the quarantine dock, where we have to pass food around the rod iron spires. Our daily routine starts with waking up around 8am for a cup of cardamom laced coffee. (The grocery store delivers whatever they have in stock, if you are not specific.) At 9am sharp, the nurse arrives to take our temperature, just in case we got COVID since our vaccinations and required negative tests, prior to leaving the U.S. We keep occupied in the mornings with boat projects like getting the stove and generator working, rigging halyards, organizing drawers & cabinets, cleaning everything from volcano dust and other gunk, mounting the MOM, lubing anything that spins and the every day meal planning & clean up. 

On the quarantine dock, no one is supposed to come in contact with any human beings other than the nurse and approved service providers but we couldn’t help running into the only other boat owner two slips over. Turns out, he is in St. Lucia for engine work and knows a guy that can look at our generator that doesn’t want to stay on and is leaking water. We quietly masked up and invite the guy on board. He taps the fuel solenoid and almost instantly gets the generator going. (Andrew figures it benefitted from an hour or so of running with his jury rigged solution the night before.) The other culprit was a water pump seal for a 20 year old Yanmar, that Our engine guy was able to find at the local WaterWorld.

The first week back has been one for finding things we didn’t know we had on board, not finding things we could have sworn we put here or there and diagnosing what works and what doesn’t for our eventual trip north. Unfinished projects for the professionals, like putting a loop in our brand new main halyard for hoisting it and varnishing the second half of a table that was hidden away, have been farmed out and it feels like we are actually getting things done, despite having not moved off the dock!

Yesterday, we set anchor in the bay where the scenery is much improved, we can swim for exercise (instead of calisthenics on the dock) and we can fish (if we ever find our fishing gear!! 

Who knew it would be so hard to get back to St. Lucia

When we left Billy Ruff’n on the hard in Rodney Bay Marina, St. Lucia, we had no idea how long it would take or how difficult it would be to get back! We originally thought we would return in November, 2020 but as the pandemic persisted along with Andrew’s shoulder issues, we scheduled surgery and a flight for early April. Andrew’s rehab progressed well and my fledgling copywriting business kept me busy while the months passed. When March roared in, it felt like time to plan our return in earnest so we scheduled doctor appointments, re-upped on meds, etc. but the one thing we couldn’t do was get a vaccine appt. Having tried for months, we finally lucked into a friend who knew a friend who knew a way for us both to get scheduled for the Pfizer jab, the only bad news was that we would have to reschedule our flight to get the second dose. We’ve learned over the past year, how to deal with changing plans so we adjusted and set our flight for April 12th. 

Current COVID restrictions require a negative COVID test and government approval prior to boarding a flight to St. Lucia. The test must be 5 days prior to the flight (including the day of the flight, which we learned the hard way). It takes 1-2 days to schedule a test, 2-4 days to get your results, and 1-2 days to hear from the St. Lucian government, so if you add up all the days, you can see that it takes some precise timing and luck!! We managed to get everything done on our end but were still waiting hear from St. Lucia going into the weekend before our Monday (6am) flight. It was a bit nerve racking to wait but we finally heard Sunday afternoon and headed down to the Marriott airport hotel in Philadelphia that evening. The next morning, we were up at 4am and while I showered, Andrew went to check in for our flight. Bad news: the flight to St. Lucia was cancelled due to weather in Miami. We wondered if we should take the flight to Miami and then the next flight out to St. Lucia but when we realized that our COVID tests would be out of date before the next available flight, it was obvious we were going back home to do the whole process over again!!!

The good news is that we re-schedule a direct flight for Saturday, April 17th, we got our tests and applications completed in time and we are now nestled on our 2nd home in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia with all kinds of boat projects to do. Fortunately (if you choose to look at it that way), we are quarantined on the dock for two weeks and have nothing better to do!!!!