We had to wait on our boat for five days, get tested, and then wait for the test results. So we had some time to kill. Mostly we spent it doing projects, using all the new Sunbrella we’d had shipped into St Lucia. But we also spent some time creepin’ on our unusually large neighbors. There was apparently a big wedding in Mustique, which drew in some very wealthy guests, and even the ultra-rich have to quarantine. Or at least, their yacht crews do. So we watched these big behemoths rolling in the same uncomfortable anchorage as the rest of us, and looked up some of their eye-popping charter rates.
We also took some very dignified naps.
But mostly, projects. We’d been seeing a little chaffing on our dinghy chaps, so we took them off and put on some reinforcements.
Even that gives a little taste of how helpful Captain was, but in fact he was much more helpful than that. I cannot emphasize enough how much our cat loves this sewing machine.
The zipper on our stack-pack had started to come apart, so we replaced that, and patched a coupled of dodgy-looking places. Sunbrella is pretty amazing, there’s barely any color difference between the old and new pieces. Our sewing is almost as amazing: after 12 hours of sewing, Jazz decided to finish the zipper and ended up about half an inch off (middle picture). Good enough: it’ll protect the sail and nobody looks at that part anyway.
We also replaced the covers for a bunch of outdoor things, like both of our carts, and propane tank, and the captain’s chair. (Which is usually Captain’s chair.) And we finally re-sized the magnetic screen we’d gotten for the main door, and installed the velcro to keep it in place. And finished the rain-catchers. And made an outdoor-approved bag for the spinnaker. And Jazz tried to fix some of her bras, which we apparently did not buy in sufficient quantity before leaving the states, and which simply cannot be purchased in the islands. All in all, many of our “todo cards” became discards.
In the process of getting all the tools and materials out for these projects, we discovered a leaky jug of gear oil. Despite it being a pretty nasty mess, we were spared the worst of it: Jazz’s insistence on wrapping everything in multiple layers of plastic paid off, and we ended up mostly discarding bags and scrubbing the bulkhead, rather than having to clean oil out of every piece of gear in there. Still, no more oil at the bottoms of piles.
Jazz also insists I include this picture of me adjusting a connection on the alternator.
It wasn’t a death march, though, we had lots of fun along the way. After all, this was still Christmas season. So there were silly hats made out of scraps, and we saw a wedding on the island, and a bird on the bow.
So, all in all, a productive quarantine. And our test results came back negative, so we were released back into the world!