Waiting to be released

We heard rumours of delays, so we resigned ourselves to waiting and getting on with our daily routine to while away the time – long cooked breakfast with coffee, reading the papers, doing our daily sudoku, exercise regime……

We had seen that JImmy (the guy in charge of all of us on quarantine buoys) had released some people at about 5pm yesterday so knew that we could get the call at any time. About 5:30pm Jimmy comes screaming over to us bearing our passports and the good news that we are free to go. Too late for us to move on but wonderful news as we have been here much longer than anticipated and have got down to the last of our fresh food – two tomatoes, a few eggs and a couple of apples! About 20 minutes after Jimmy left we got a call from Nicole at the testing centre, who explained to us there were backlogs getting results out and they had decided to release us without our result as we have been here a week, much longer than the 2 to 5 days they had said it would take. We have to send in our individual temperatures every morning and tell them where we are. She also asked us to be extra vigilant about wearing our masks.

You can just see Jeldi Jeldi over the edge

View back to Kingstown, St Vincent

Phoebs found a hermit crab

Someone managed to get a wheel off the canon

Finnish funded concrete staircase

Desperate to get our feet on land we decided to visit Fort Duvernette, and see the sunset from the top of this 60m high Basalt Volcanic Plug. I am on all dingy driving at the moment to get my confidence up. It was not the easiest jetty to get to with waves channeling through between the islands and then breaking just beyond on the reef. Very sadly it is all looking a little unloved, the staircase was concreted in 1969 thanks to a grant from Finland, and is suffering in parts. The fort was built in 1790 by the British to protect their sugar interests on the island from the Caribs and the French. The top lookout still has many old metal canons, obviously way too heavy for anyone to contemplate moving. It was a momentary sunset which we just caught between the clouds, well worth the steep climb.

We decided to celebrate our release by going out for supper, everywhere was closed except the bar at the main dingy dock, where we came across Jimmy and the smell of plenty of weed! It was all pretty run down and after a quick beer we decided to leave as there were plenty of people about without masks and we thought it wasn’t worth the risk. We managed to rustle up a steak and sweet potato for supper, so not all bad.