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!!