Thai lunch in a garden

Wednesday 1 April, CY day 18: Today’s highlight (and excuse for going ashore): Thai take away to an alternative table.

I was planning on reporting that we had started sewing plastic face masks to sell locally (plastic that you can’t breath through!), but in the global spirit of banning April-fool jokes I thought better of it. That said, Hallberg Rassy Parts posted an excellent one: a special offer for 1-April only, a wireless stand-alone shower head that can be used anywhere on a boat. And they show a picture of a lone shower head with a WiFi antenna in place where the water hose normally connects. Glad the Swedish have not lost their sense of humor.

However, on Cloudy Bay we have a sudden sense-of-humor-loss when during the daily briefing we hear of another 8 positive Covid-19 cases on this small island, bringing the total to 22 now, out of 250 tests conducted. Like everywhere, this is starting to look serious here too. You can really feel the anxiety in the voices of the Premier, Governor and Chief Medical Officer as they make today’s briefing. What a burden for them, and all global leaders, to bare.

In the morning a very tatty looking French Janeau-411 arrives and anchors quite close to us. Other than a tiny French flag on their stern, they have neither the Q-flag nor even a Cayman courtesy flag. And they clearly don’t know the rules in Cayman, because it’s actually illegal to anchor here. A dinghy from another French boat goes to see them and they then proceed to a mooring ball.
But just two hours later they set sail again, sailing west away from the island. Likely they didn’t like the idea of 14 days quarantine here?
We wonder where they are heading to? Cuba announced yesterday that all foreigners and foreign boats must leave in the next 48hrs; Mexico and all Central America is closed to entry; and probably USA also by the time they get that far. It’s all a bit precarious being a yacht sailing between countries right now.

The rest of the day we work on video editing. Almost finished the last Exuma video, finally. This amazing cruising ground has proved to be quite a marathon for video editing. We had a total of 1,400 video clips for the Exuma Cays alone. And, on average, Oana will skillfully dissect each clip into 5-10 pieces, adjusting each for audio, speed and content. A marathon of editing indeed.

To break our time in front of the PC, our highlight of the day is to go ashore for a Thai takeaway dinner. Restaurants are all closed by law, but are allowed to do take away (or rather pickups or deliveries only). We use it as an excuse to stretch our legs ashore. Although there seems to be more traffic on the roads than expected in this time of soft curfew, the town still has an eerie silence about it. Certainly no worries of getting run down as we cross the road.
As we enter the restaurant we are quickly shooed back out by the owner. She is scared the police will have seen us enter – apparently that is strictly not allowed and they already received a warning in that respect. So our order is taken while we stand outside on the pavement. We wait a few minutes in the shade, then decide to stroll around the block to kill time. Nearby we find a very nice courtyard with tables and chairs and decide to return and eat our takeaway there, rather than back on Cloudy. And a very pleasant dinner table it is, surrounded by gardens of colourful bougainvillea and total peace, except for the sound of small song birds.

On our walk back to the dinghy we notice things are getting dusty and there are leaves and some litter blown on the streets and pavements which were previously pristinely clean. We discuss just how long it will be before there is dusty tumble weed rolling down the streets, as portrayed in western movies when Clint Eastwood ambles into town on his horse.

Back at Cloudy we both jump in the sea for a refreshing swim almost immediately that we are on board. The water is so lovely and warm here. And today there are barely any waves in the very gentle west wind. Then there is yet another wonderful sunset. We are starting to wonder if it ever rains here. It’s quite a contrast from Jamaica where it rained pretty much every day. These flat coral islands just don’t have the elevation nor land mass to create those wet humid conditions.

We continue editing in the evening, while listening to the lovely music variety on the local Breeze FM channel. Tomorrow I hope to start side panels to add to the bimini. In the midday sun, the bimini casts excellent shade over the cockpit. But when the sun gets lower, the sunlight streams into the cockpit. The extra removable panels should fix that. Let’s see if my new found sewing skills are up to the task!