Getting to know our neighbours

We got up early for our morning exercise and were rather despondent as a cyclist stopped us on our return and asked if we had heard the Premier making an announcement on tv last night. Of course we have no access to a tv so hadn’t heard it. He told us that she announced that from today nobody was to leave their property, we could no longer exercise outside of our immediate property. That was rather sad to hear as we are enjoying our walks.

We are slowly getting to know our fellow 3 yachties. Chris and Lorraine from Beccles are moored opposite and we look out over towards them. He is a bundle of energy who can’t sit still so is always doing something to his boat. They were both retired teachers and have done a lot of sailing on various boats. They did a circumnavigation of the Atlantic in 1981, which seems pretty hardcore when you think how little technology they had then. After retiring they they took 7 years circumnavigating the world, including 2 years just in Indonesia which they loved. They left Beccles last August and made their way slowly to the Canary islands. Then before Christmas they sailed across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and were slowly making their way to the States, with a plan to go and explore around Maine, where they had planned to sell their boat and fly home. They don’t think things will get better here for a long time so they plan to return to the UK. The weather conditions are not right at the moment to cross the Atlantic, so they will wait until the end of April beginning of May to head home.

The German couple are also retired and spent a lot of time, money and research on getting their brand new boat spec’d for them personally, I think it took a couple of years in the making. They have done every conceivable sailing course, and then broke the boat in by sailing around Ireland and Scotland, they wanted harsh conditions to test it out. They ultimately want to do the Northwest passage. All of this holds zero appeal to me! They have serious gear and have decided they will head back to Germany as they see no immediate chance of getting into the States.

We haven’t spoken to the American couple much, they were moored on the other side of the marina and when it emptied they moved across. They are mid sixties, sold up everything and have lived aboard their boat the last 5 years. They are heading the same direction as us to the Grenadines. We had been having a laugh with the Germans about how crazy Boris is and that he now has C19, and then Regina the German lady whose boat is opposite the Americans shouted out ‘at least he is not as crazy as Trump’. Only later on did I notice they have a Trump support flag under the Stars and Stripes!

Rowan checked the gov website and could see nothing about the new restriction on exercising. To play it safe we decided to swim in the Marina for our exercise in the afternoon, as we assume it is part of the property. I first confirmed with everyone that nobody was pumping blackwater (toilet waste) into the marina, it appears only a couple of us use the marina facilities, so the others are using their holding tanks, we hope! The water does look very clean, and the Germans have seen lots of turtles out swimming. It turned out to be pretty strenuous exercise as you have the tide and breeze to swim against.

in the evening Bob from the Marina brought us the official letter from the Governor. It appears the Premier and the Governor got their wires crossed and we can go off the property to exercise. We are guessing the Governor is more powerful than the Premier.

It is a very sweet longwinded letter.