A much needed quiet week here in Sint Maarten enjoying the beach and dinner with friends. We worked on a couple of small projects but nothing major. The new mizzen sail arrived! It needed a few tweaks but is now flying happily again! The majority of the week has been spent trying to figure out possible routes to Grenada. During normal times, one would just island hop down the chain and enjoy the ride. During Stupid times, not so easy. Bill has been on the phone with multiple people in multiple countries trying to get an answer to the seemingly simple question “Can we anchor offshore and sleep as long as we agree not to leave the boat?” Back in the day when I was working, we would spend hours on the phone each week calling insurance companies to see if speech and occupational therapy were covered services on a child’s health plan. We learned quickly that if we called three times, we would get three entirely different answers to the same question. Therefore, we would call until we got an answer we liked and then we would go with that answer. Calling countries this week has been much the same situation. To get permission to enter St. Kitts, Bill emailed the tourism board. A woman responded and told him to call the Covid team. He called the Covid team and they told him to call a broker who would know more than they did. He called the broker who told him, “You did not hear this from me….show up at sunset and leave around sunrise and no one will notice.” Check! St. Kitts and Nevis good to go! So, these are the answers we have so far that fit into our plan….St. Barths, get a Covid test and fill out an online form….check. St. Kitts and Nevis, sneak on through….check. Monserrat, have emailed and called multiple times with no response….only have about 4000 people in the entire country and most of the major areas were wiped out by a volcano so we are going with no one will care….check. Guadalupe, a bit of a pain so may need to skip that one and have a long run to Dominica. Dominica, Covid test but if you have money, come on in regardless and spend some here we are starving…check. Martinique, French....need I say more….probably have to skip and make a long run to St. Lucia….check. St. Lucia and St. Vincent, come on in and anchor for 24 hours just don’t get off the boat…check. Grenada, Covid test, park in outer bay and wait for them to let us into the marina for our hurricane season stay. So, that is the plan as of this week. Subject to change at any given moment!
In the meantime, we will just be watching the weather and getting a few last minute things done so that Galt is ready to go in June. When you own a home, there are some jobs that you would pay any amount to have someone else do such as fixing septic tank issues or repairing a roof in mid-July in Georgia. On Galt, our job that we will pay any amount for someone else to do is cleaning the bottom of the boat. We decided today that we would jump in and attempt to clean the sides of the boat and the bottom of the dinghy. We had the entire boat bottom cleaned in St. Croix about a month ago so how bad could it be? Ah, anyone who is concerned about the death of the ocean due to climate change needs to come and visit us. We will gladly let you take over scraping away the millions of creatures and algae that form on Galt in less than a month’s time. With each scrape, the water clouds with krill and plankton and small fish come to feast happily. I kept close watch to make sure that larger fish did not come to feast happily on the smaller fish that arrived! Also with each scrape, you can feel the creatures gathering in your hair and ears. I am very convinced that by week’s end, the creature from Alien will be bursting forth from my chest because I can feel it incubating inside me as I write. Bill just announced that there is a cleaning guy over at the marina…needless to say, that guy will be hired by day’s end. We wrapped up the week with a trip to the casino at the local resort. Bill wore his unlucky shirt so that one will no longer be allowed on casino trips. I wasted some time playing nickel slots on a machine that I could not figure out at all but when I won, it would make lots of noise so I figured it was as good as any. I hit the jackpot just as we were leaving and walked out with $15.00 more dollars than I had when we arrived so I called it a good night. I am not sure what the next week holds but I am sure the sun will be shining and the wind will be blowing so I will look forward to it. I hope you all enjoy your Memorial Day weekend. Welcome back summer!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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