Cayman visa extended another month

Tuesday 14 Apr, CY day 31: A full month since we arrived in Grand Cayman, and we need to request visa extension.

It was another rather unpleasant bouncy night. When the SE wind dies away at night, the swell rolls around into the bay, hitting Cloudy on the beam. A perfect recipe for rock and roll and stern slapping 🙁

But today we get a brief reprieve from the boat. A welcome break to visit the supermarket. The queue is much shorter this morning and even quiet inside. Maybe people still have plenty of food after all the Easter rush. Again, the air conditioning inside is very welcome and makes us realise things are steadily getting hotter here as summer is approaching. Still very well stocked, and we are beyond happy with the choice and the goodies we can buy here.

Today marks one month since we’ve been here in Cayman. The visa we got on arrival was valid for 30 days. Obviously, we need to extend our stay here. Per protocol, we write a polite request letter to the Cayman Governor, then take it ashore to the immigration office, which surprisingly is actually open. Odd for a country whose borders are closed! Normally there is a fee to extend ($100/boat plus $50/person), but given the situation (that land based visitors can not leave even if they want to) these fees are wavered.

Now that we have our one month extension, we discuss that we should aim for this to be our limit. We really should be making a move, somewhere, by then. Hopefully the situation in US will become clearer. The Covid-19 figures for Maryland (where we plan to haul out) are not looking good right now, all increasing at an alarming rate. We will need everything to be open when we arrive: to haulout, have a rental car, flights out, etc.

Today, the wind has decreased again, so the over-boom cover goes back on. It gives instant relief in the cockpit. Not only cooler but much less brightness too. Pity, it means covering the solar panels, but we’d rather have the shade. I’m now starting to think how the new solar panels can be redeployed onto the over-boom cover when we have it up. Never a dull moment for an engineer’s brain 🙂

Late afternoon I decide to try to tackle Cloudy’s annoying rolling problem, by somehow getting her bow pointing into the swell (pitching is much less unpleasant than rolling ). We can’t do our usual trick of deploying a stern anchor because we are over coral. So instead, we make a bridle arrangement to the mooring buoy. This entails tying a line from Cloudy’s stern mooring cleat to the mooring pennant, then letting out on the bow line and pulling in on the stern line. With both stern and bow lines now attached to the buoy (bow-line shorter than stern-line) the setup places the mooring buoy off our port bow, rotating Cloudy clockwise, with bow now into the incoming swell and wind on our port side. Instantly the rolling is dramatically reduced and is replaced by gentle pitching. So much nicer. The only question is: why the hell didn’t we try this 2 days ago?! Hm… I guess the answer is the solar panels really did get my full attention.

The rest of the day we generally potter about doing this and that yet really nothing at all. Quite a nice relaxed day, with the sewing machine remaining on lock-down!