We Have Moved Again (This is Normal, we are on a Boat)

Location: Young Island Cut, St. Vincent

I'll try to make this post shorter for the sake of my sisters' short attention spans. Also more pictures. Here is a bird. It's called a booby. It's usually uglier than this.

We're in a different country! The trip up was fantastic. Beautiful sailing, calm seas, pretty islands, and (mostly) good weather. 

I spent most of my time either reading or napping. I love the autopilot. Of course, it does have its faults. The route that it suggested included going through a narrow passage between two large rocks. There is another, similarly-sized passage next to that one; a great deal of its width is taken up by a wrecked tanker (seen in the rightmost gap). We decided to go around.

We have two taps for the kitchen sinks. In Grenada, they were both fresh water. However, Jem turned the main tap to provide salt water because saltwater is free and freshwater is not. So this was a new system. Now, every morning, I give a glass of water to Basil the Plant. Note that mornings tend to be a time when I am Not Fully Awake. And so, the morning of our departure, when Jem jokingly asked if I had made sure to not feed Basil saltwater, I realized that to my horror, I had used the wrong tap. I spent the entire sail in mourning. Miraculously, he's still alive. Also miraculously still alive is my data plan. I guess they were right in St. George's after all.

We're currently tied to a quarantine mooring. We were told that if we arrived in St. Vincent within seven days of our covid test, we'd be cleared in. We got the test on Monday, were supposed to receive the results Wednesday, actually received them on Friday, and sailed to St. Vincent on Saturday. We were then told that a covid test had to actually have been done within five days and we needed to wait until Monday to do the test again. Jem and I were noticeably annoyed. It took us a biscuit each to calm down.

They said that the testing clinic opened at 8am, so we were at a the dock at 8am. A very angry man told us to go to the other side of the dock, as a boat was coming. (Later we saw that he was using that side to launch his own boat. I did not like this man very much.) This man--let's call him Brad--gave us some directions. We walked along various paths while he yelled at us incoherently. Eventually we came to a series of closed gates and went back to the dock. Brad then said, "you are here too early, come back at 10." Thanks, Brad.

(Reading pause for my sisters.) Here's another bird picture. Frigates fly very high up. They remind me of the immensity of the sky and of our insignificance in the world. Also they're pretty.

To get your covid test when arriving in St. Vincent, you need to tie your dinghy to a crowded dock, pass Brad, turn left, walk along a rickety path made of wet, uneven wooden planks wedged between the water and a concrete wall, come across a wire gate in the side of the concrete, walk across what looks like someone's lawn, go through another gate onto the property of the Paradise Beach Hotel (it looks quite pretty, the building is canary-yellow), walk around the kayaks, the pool, the hotel, and several middle-aged men staring at you, come to a white tent with a lot of French people, give your information to a nice lady called Nicole, wait awhile, go into the hotel office which is now the testing site (and thankfully has better sanitary conditions than the Carriacou clinic), get jabbed up your nose, pay a lot of test and immigration fees, go back to the dock, pass more French people and Brad, get back on the dinghy, and cast off. We returned to Heaven's Door hot, sweaty, annoyed, and dehydrated. Another biscuit helped.

(Reading pause.) This is what rain looks like while sailing.

I don't mind staying on the boat; in fact, I quite like it. I just hate to be forced to stay there because of bureaucracy. I've been spending my time doing laundry (in the Scrubba!) and reading. I finished Life of Pi in two days. Something about living on a boat and experiencing occasional bouts of loneliness made the book hit way harder than it should, and nearly launched me into a literature-fueled existential crisis. Again, a biscuit was the solution. We're going to run out soon.

This post was not shorter. That's ok; much like how frigates remind me of the insignificance of my existence, writing reminds me of the insignificance of my sisters' opinions. Here's another sunset picture. Bye