Sunday, May 10, 2020

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI
18.20.016N
64.55.440 W

Happy Mother’s Day!

So, does anyone want to take bets on 2021?  Volcano?  Locusts?  Asteroid?  New Nickelback album?

We’ve been anchored here for so long, Dale is trying to figure out how to clean the slimy grass growing – not on the bottom of the boat, it always grows there – but from our anchor chain.  He says that when we finally pull it up, it’s going to be a giant mess. 

Not that we’re going anywhere soon, we received word today that Trinidad will be reopening in 6 phases.  Opening the borders is the last phase and doesn’t even have a date.  However, it’s pretty obvious that it won’t be open to incoming boats prior to July.  The summary sent to us said that their Prime Minister had extended the general “stay at home” orders to 5/23 with the exception of supermarkets, pharmacies, take out restaurants, etc., basically where we are now.  If the numbers stay low, they would open manufacturing, public sector construction and 50% of the transportation in Phase 2 which would last until 6/6.  Phase 3 would open the private sector construction the rest of the transportation to 6/20.  Pushing their opening to June puts most of the remaining boats holding out hope in this area in jeopardy with their respective insurance companies.  We know that our insurance says we’re still insured for normal things just not in the event of a hurricane.  That means that we’ll be keeping an even closer eye on the weather from this point on.  Phases 4, 5 and 6 (reopening the borders) weren’t even given dates. 

As you can imagine, this was one of the topics of conversation when the 3 crews gathered for Mother’s Day on Opal; that and whether our children remembered us.  We’re still holding out but the discussion veered towards where to go if we can’t get to Grenada or Trinidad in the event of a hurricane. 

In the meantime, Dale has successfully filled the water tank to overflowing via the water maker – twice.  This is good.  I hate being restricted as to how much water I’m allowed to use doing dishes or washing my hair.  He even transferred some diesel from our jerry cans on deck to the tanks to top them off.  On cloudy days, he would run one of the engines to heat our water for showers, so we’ve slowly been using fuel.  He and Gerry dinghied over to replace the fuel in the jerry cans and apparently got soaked on their transit back.  Dale said that although it might not feel like it with all of the rocking we’ve been doing for the last week, we’re actually very protected from the waves being swept in from the opposite side of the island.  Apparently, its pretty messed up over towards Current Cut and Hassel Island.  Rather glad I sat that one out. 

Gene and Renee have a new toy to keep themselves busy (A MiniCat - photo to follow if I ever get a decent internet connection).  We watched as they learned how to use it.  Being an inflatable, its got to be a lot trickier than a solid boat to sail around in. 

Gerry has been preparing Opal for the new refrigerator and compressor.  He was pretty upset when the refrigeration guys didn’t show up to de-gas the current one so that the Tinker Twins/Tinker Triplets could disassemble the old one. 

Dale has kept himself busy cleaning, or maybe I should say whitening, our decks.  As we have a white boat, rust and water stains turn our white boat more of a cream color at times.  Since he found a new product to clean those stains, he’s been going crazy spraying that stuff everywhere.  Then he got busy cleaning the dinghy.  Generally, we haul the dinghy onto a sandy shore to give it a good scrub from time to time but this year, sandy shores are sorely missing, so it was starting to look rather derelict.  Now its back to its pristine self. 

If you’re interested in the garbage issue, I was complaining about in the last post, it’s been resolved that only wet garbage is to be considered regulated, all other garbage can be disposed of at the marina for $3/bag.  We can live with that.   Although I’d still like to know what our anchoring fees are going towards; just revenue, I guess. 

Finally, if anyone owes you money, go to their house now. They should be home.