Self-isolation day on Cloudy Bay

Monday 16 Mar, KY day 2,George Town: Cleaning the hull and pottering onboard.

Another peaceful sleep on our mooring buoy near George Town harbour. We decide to stay on board again. Between us we have quite a busy day. Oana reading the updated news and editing yet another video, and me boat cleaning. On video uploading however, we are not doing so well. We have found a WiFi signal but it’s very weak. All last night we only managed to upload 25% of one video, so we gave up. We’ll have to find some good internet soon because we have several to upload now.

I start my hull cleaning with the toilet. First job is to circulate some bleach solution through our sea water bow toilet. About once every 6 weeks it starts giving H2S (bad egg) smells so I squirt some bleach into the intake thru-hull while Oana cycles the toilet from inside. As soon as she smells bleach she stops. And we leave it like that for an hour or two before flushing it out. The procedure works very well, and it smells like daisies in there for another few weeks. Well, maybe not quite like daisies after my morning ablutions, but you know what I mean 🙂
Next is hull cleaning. Actually I’m really surprised how clean the antifoul has stayed this year. Much better than last year with the same paint (Micron-Extra). But there is a minor layer of slime and maybe 20 barnacles. 2 hours later (and a bit less paint on the hull) it’s all clean. Last job is to stick my rather large and long pipe-cleaner brush into each and every thru-hull fitting. It’s always quite amazing how much dirt, barnacles and lime scale comes out when I extract the brush.

Next, the top sides. As we have plenty of fresh water, I use the hose to wash all the salt off of everything, given it doesn’t look like rain is on the agenda anytime soon. We also remove, wash and stow the cockpit tent. It’s so good to have the cockpit open again.
Then I take one of the new solar panels out of its box and see how best to arrange the new array on the bimini. Hmmm there are several possible configurations. I’ll have to think more on this one. But I’m really looking forward to getting the Sailrite sewing machine out and getting the solar panel project completed.

During the day we talk more about the coronavirus situation. After finding a local radio station we hear the news from Cayman. They had a case on the island so they are already in the containment stage and planning ahead for the mitigation stage. All cruise liners have already been stopped for 2 months and all flights will cease from 22-March.
Meanwhile, Alex (my son) is in the middle of a 3 months tour of South America. Currently he is in Galapagos but it seems they plan to evacuate all foreigners back to Quito. He wants to fly home but all international flights are canceled. And my daughter Jennie in Queensland Australia is at hone in quarantine after a fellow doctor she has been working with tested positive. It’s all rather worrying. But for us, we are glad to be in Caymans. The news broadcast gave us confidence that they have a good plan here. Fingers crossed. Certainly we are glad not to be in Cuba, where flights from Italy are still arriving and they are still taking cruise liners – even when they have Covid-19 cases! What are they thinking there? $dollars$?