Flying back to Cloudy Bay for winterization project

Wednesday 30 Sep: As today’s blog title suggests, we have made the decision to defer our travels on Cloudy Bay till 2021 so I’m heading back to prepare Cloudy for her first real winter, poor thing.

We spent the last 4 months hunkered down in Bucharest since arriving home in June. During our initial 2 weeks quarantine we had at least daily visits by the authorities to make sure we were not being naughty. They would call Oana’s phone and we would both have to wave out the apartment window to them below. All very efficient!
The continental climate of Romania meant the usual July-August everyday heat of 33-37 degC. And this year with almost zero rain. Too hot frankly.

We purchased a Suzuki Burgman 650 scooter which was both perfect and exciting for nipping between Bucharest’s horrible traffic congestion. The worst in Europe. The city is essentially one big slowly moving car park – on both streets and pavements, often without distinction! But while the locals desperately presided over where to go for their summer holidays in this age of Covid restrictions, we happily stayed stationary at home, walked the city, the parks, watched Netflix, enjoyed a full size bed, convenient shopping and Oana her favorite bath tub! Living on a yacht does make you appreciate some aspects of landlubbering!

But now it’s time for some work again. And today I’m on a flight back to Cloudy Bay, flying to Washington via Istanbul, on Turkish Airlines. Yes, I know, it is rather weird to initially travel east to Istanbul when you actually want to go west! Here’s why: USA still has a ban on any non-US resident arriving from Europe (as if Europe and China still pose a big Covid threat to the US!). For clarity, the CDC carefully spells out a very long and apparently complete list of banned European countries. But oddly, Romania is missing from that list. Work that one out if you can! Especially that per capita, Romania currently has the worst Covid stats in all Europe. I can only guess the CDC’s knowledge of world geography is somewhat lacking! Turkey is also not on the banned list, hence my travel itinerary. Frankly, I’m lucky to be able to get back to Cloudy at all!

At the beginning of the hurricane season, our Plan-A had been to launch Cloudy Bay this October and head to Panama via the Dutch Antilles and transit the canal in January. Then start our 2-year Pacific crossing to New Zealand. But while some Pacific islands are back open for yachts, many important ones are not. And New Zealand and Australia are very much shut. Recent news tell of a German yacht arriving to NZ without permission to do so. The yacht was confiscated, and the crew thrown in jail until a flight back to Germany can be arranged. And as a bonus, they will be permanently banned from ever coming to NZ again. If true, it’s serious stuff and a big fat message to other yachts hoping to escape the cyclone season by coming south to NZ.

As summer progressed, we contemplated on a Plan-B which was to do a simple winter season in Bahamas then see what happens. But even Bahamas recently put serious restrictions back in place as they headed into a second wave of Covid. What a world, eh? If you had predicted a year ago that global travel would have come to a grinding halt, you’d have been called insane!

So Plan-C is to now give both Cloudy and Oana a one year break from sailing and, hopefully, set off again next autumn. Fingers and toes crossed that we will be back to some form of normality. Though I have a nagging doubt on that.

As I transit the Atlantic (currently over Iceland) I’m wondering how I will find the boat. Dirty for sure, but hoping the O2 generator and dehumidifier we left on board have kept the mildew at bay – or better, killed it completely. And I wonder what will have stopped working this time? Each time we lay up, there is always some system that didn’t appreciate being left idle. Last year, the prize went to a leaking galley faucet.

I have a long list of things to get done. It’s going to be 5 weeks of sleeves rolled up and daily updates back to the Admiral in HQ 🙂