Called to do Covid test a day early

We didn’t have the VHF radio on as it makes such a racket with everyone contacting the marina. Rowan looked at his emails at 11am and discovered one calling us in to do our test this morning. They had been calling us on the VHF! We were meant to be talking to the kids at 12 but cancelled that and rushed to the dock. All very efficient, with the poor nurses wrapped head to toe in PPE plastic in this heat! Our fingers were pricked for a little blood and put into a plastic container to produce a reading. It took 15 mins to produce our negative results, which meant joining another queue to get our all clear certificate. We still needed to clear out of customs but the queue was 4 hours long. The marina pub was open and doing a roaring trade with everyone hanging around for customs.

Churches and fishing boats dominate the town.

We decided to go back to PolePole and speak to the kids, getting them all together is a challenge. In fact Luke was still doing work so couldn’t join us. Great to hear the girls full of beans, and rather a scary farewell to Hannah as there is a leopard in her camp and she has to go outside in the dark to get to her room, the few people out there at camp had already gone to bed. What an experience she is having. Phoebs is experiencing the angst of motherhood, with all their ducklings fledged, and out on their own all night long! Its very cute they are not straying too far.

Rowan dropped me off at the dock to go and do some shopping while he returned to the boat to wait for our Refrigeration engineer. It felt wonderful to be walking on firm ground again, a gorgeous little town with lush vegetation, very colourful. Sadly the guy couldn’t fix the freezer as he says the fan is broken, so it will have to be fixed when the boat is out the water – sob, no more ice for my G&T’s, my main concern!

Lockdown has officially ended here today and restaurants are allowed to be open. We searched in vain, but looks like it’s a slow reopening and all we managed to get was a take away from the marina pub. Never mind, greasy chips still felt like rather a treat!

We are all prepared now to leave early in the morning for Carriacou, a Grenadian island north of the main island. Looks like it has some lovely beaches and snorkelling, we just have to hope the weather is kind, as we are hitting some stormy fronts.