We break isolation to foray for food

Tuesday 31 Mar, CY day 17: Today’s highlight:we head ashore to the supermarket! And the fender blankets turned out quite well.

Today is our allocated day for the supermarket and we are sooo looking forward to it! But we decide to savor our trip and not go ashore until this afternoon.
It’s another very light wind day and the over-boom sunshade is already taking the heat as we have breakfast. I don’t know how we would live without it on days like this. At this latitude, the sun’s rays seem to triple in intensity when there is no cooling breeze.

Our first job of the day, while the air is still relatively cool and there is no wind, is to try out our newly made fender blankets. We manage to install them pretty quickly on each side. What looked like a monster amount of material down in the saloon, looks quite small on the side of the hull. We are pretty chuffed with the result. They hang perfectly from gunwale down to 15cm above the waterline. And the pockets of lead-shot in the lower hem hold it down nicely. The blankets could have done with being a bit longer, but these were the longest pieces of heat-shrink plastic that we managed to scrounge in the Herrington yard. Never look a gift horse in the mouth … and all that. There are a couple of sewing adjustments required, and this time I bring the Sailrite into the cockpit where it’s a bit easier to maneuver the material.
And while the machine is out again, I also sew some leather pieces onto the cockpit tent. Previously they were just glued on, but the glue was starting to fail.

Meanwhile, below decks, Oana continues to edit videos. She is really managing to ploughs through them with this current focus that she has. It is such a lot of work, but will be worth it when we look back on our trip from our rocking chairs on the sun porch!

At 2pm we listen to the government briefing. They announce 2 new positive results, bringing the total positive tests to 14. And these 2 new cases are not related to any travel or contact with anyone who has traveled. So the island is now definitely in the phase of community spread. Well, it was inevitable really, wasn’t it? At least they don’t have any severe cases in hospital… yet.

At 3pm, as instructed, we call port security to inform them we are heading ashore to go shopping. We are surprised when she responds that we “need to order supplies and have them delivered to the boat”. What on earth is she talking about? Who the hell will deliver food to the boat? After some back and forth on the VHF, someone sensible comes on and gives us the OK to go ashore. Pfff, like they were going to stop us from our much anticipated visit to the supermarket!

At the Kirk supermarket we find a long queue outside. But with the 2m separations there are not actually many people in the queue and we manage to enter the supermarket within 15-20 minutes. Inside, as we are greeted by wonderful air conditioning and full shelves of goodies, we say to each other: “let’s not rush this, eh?” And rush it we don’t. It was probably our most relaxed shopping ever. For once, no hurry to fill the trolly and get out. We don’t need much, just a few essentials. But we still can’t resist attacking the chocolate isle. They have such a greet selection. Better than any US store. The checkout lines seem long but it’s because of the 2m separation again.

Back at Cloudy, we eat our very late lunch after 6pm, watch another gorgeous sunset, then relax the rest of the evening as Cloudy rocks gently in the swell. Now that the easterly wind has gone, the swell is creeping into the bay. Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse than this. And let’s also hope there are no more olympian cockroaches looking to come and stowaway on Cloudy, like last night.