Purgatory in Paradise — Harris Crew

Well holy sh*t.

How the eff is June 11th???? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?? Where did the time go?

We've been here in Dominica since February 27th. Repeat. February 27th. Today is Day 106. ONE HUNDRED AND SIX.

Don't get me wrong, it's been a great place to weather this COVID-19 storm. Zero complaints about our choice to stay here versus head to another island or head home. We made the right call for us.

But daaaayum. We are looking at the horizon everyday now...truly yearning to move on.

Why are we still here? Good question.

Grenada has allowed for cruisers to schedule an arrival in advance with them and our scheduled arrival is June 24th. If you arrive outside of that time you will be denied entry. That's the short answer.

The longer answer is that there is also a downside to being in a busier place, with more cruisers, with more red tape, more process, more restrictions, and annoying level of neighbour policing and with a 14-day quarantine despite coming directly from a place with zero cases (which we could prove with our chart plotter track among other things).

So when we booked our time slot with Grenada Lima we tried to find the right balance between leaving a place we have gotten very comfortable in and heading to what will be a much safer place as the summer wanes.

As June 1 came the weather has abruptly changed - as we were told by locals that it would. Hard rain now comes every day after a very dry spring (it's raining right now actually). There are tropical waves developing in the Atlantic - nothing serious yet but it's just a matter of time. The feeling of storm preparation is building on land as well as the detailed weather review on water everyday. It's time to move on. We can all feel it. We’ve started aimlessly sailing around the big bay here, like a pacing cat, tacking and gybing back and forth trying to fight the urge to just point and go. On our last sail we were visited by some very friendly dolphins who must have been craving company because they swam under our boat and alongside us for half and hour before going to play somewhere else :)

This feeling that it was time to go was further perpetuated when our friends on Alley Cat left for Panama in the end of May - ever since then we've been itchy. Saying goodbye to them was so hard; it was the sign of an end of sorts. The end of our blissful little bubble of 3 buddy boats together with kids enjoying their independence within a group of like-minded peers. We miss them terribly and we are so happy they arrived safely in Colon and will be out of Q in another week or so. They had a generally good passage, despite 2 days of squalls and big seas that even deposited a pelican into their cockpit (!!) and are now enjoying some rest as well as likely reflection on their recent accomplishment. We also have our eyes set over there for later this fall so long as things continue to improve and open up and really look forward to seeing them again. We contemplated going right there but we feel like, if possible, there are a few things we'd still like to do in the Caribbean. Including getting some work done in a place where we are allowed on land (not currently the case in Panama). So Grenada is where we head soon.

The start of the end of our time here…one of the very last photos of our 3 buddy-boat family. Good looking group if I do say so myself…

Our other options at the moment include Antigua (wrong direction for us and right in Hurricane Alley), Aruba (would be ok but not as good to get some work done), Curacao (provided you are willing to quarantine for 14 days in a very expensive hotel which we are not), Bonaire (which would be awesome but you need to have a marina reservation and everything is booked up), Panama (not yet for us but as stated above in the fall) and a few other islands to the north of us (same issue as Antigua). We are hoping St. Vincent opens up as it's also safely south and it would be lovely to explore the Tobago Cays with the kids when there are zero other boats around. We will take what we can get, but it's hard to not hope for a few extra opportunities.

Dominica has so much to do - and we've been doing it - hiking, snorkelling, diving, eating, spending time with friends we've made here. And outside of that we've been reading, writing (no not blog posts - I'm working on a book), adding lists to the project list (though not doing many since there are no chandleries or marinas here), cooking, homeschooling, swimming...and so on. It's been wonderful. But it's also been a bit rinse-repeat-rinse-repeat. In no way do I think we've "done everything on the island" (if that's even a thing) but I do think we've slipped out of the travelling mindset of discovery and into the living locally mindset of work, eat, sleep and swim...all while enjoying life of course but not necessarily looking for a new adventure everyday. It's nice but also...feeling a bit monotonous.

This place is perfection. We’ve been twice and our friends have been there three times…there are somethings here in Dominica I could do everyday for the rest of my life and bathing in Trafalgar Falls is one of them.

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I will pause here for the collective eye-roll from all the people at home who say "duh! What do you think it's been like for the rest of us! Monotonous AND no swimming, hiking, snorkelling, etc." Yes. I hear you. I understand. We have a different reality here than at home and I know and definitely appreciate the freedoms we've had here to play. Don't hate on us for it please ;) I just want to capture how we are feeling here and what it's been like and hopefully don't sound ungrateful. I think it's one of the reasons I've not been posting in the blog very often. Honestly it didn't feel like there was much new to report / document / share. And also we very much didn't want to go on and on about the stuff we've been able to do that I know most people around the world have not been able to enjoy. I'm that would be super annoying and tone deaf. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

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Grenada also has tons to do - and the restrictions are easing enough that some of those things will be do-able ;) For us the most important will be some boat work though. Current jobs include and definitely are not limited to:

sourcing a second solar panel for our array on the davits to get up to around 700 watts before we head west
prep and paint the bottom with the same exact paint we have right now because it is awesome
change the joker valve in the aft head (don't want to start a head project here when we have zero access to parts if the sh*t hits the fan...literally and figuratively)
service macerator in the forward head (see poop note above)
replace AGM batteries for at least the 24V bank (we think we unknowingly effed their lifespan)
replace the shower pump in the forward head
replace LEDs around the boat so we don't feel like we live in a disco at night with all the flickering
reseal watermaker plumbing
minor gel coat repairs
repair or remove the hydro generator

That is a fair amount to work we will be doing in the 40 degree heat...again, grateful we have a large saltwater pool to cool off in! Fortunately nothing critical and nothing that keeps us from sailing and living safely on board. We are starting to coordinate a few of these things online but really it won't get in motion until we arrive and are out of quarantine. So we are looking at least at a few months in Grenada (including Carriacou and Petite Martinique) before heading toward the ABC's (if they will have us). In addition to boat work we will need to fit in a dentist appointment for all on board and probably another delivery of 'stuff' from home that we can't get down here and need before heading off again.

Our time here Dominica started out like a cruising adventure, turned into a pandemic panic, and now has morphed into a blurry sort of summer camp. Despite the work ahead of us in Grenada we are ready and excited for the new challenge.

So many cruisers have headed home. Put off or just cancelled their sailing plans. Started looking for jobs and homes again. Some are hoping to get back out there in a year or two. I am soooo grateful that we don't have a finite timeline so we could ride this out and then travel more slowly (as we suspect cruising will be for the next while). This would have been heartbreaking if we had a 1 year plan. So for now we have our loose short-term (boat work in Grenada) mid-term (ABC islands, Columbia then Panama in late fall) and long-term plans (Pacific crossing early next year) but we also know that those plans may change entirely and we may end up somewhere completely different (Mexico? Up the west coast of Canada?). We continue to go with the flow and try not to loose track complete of what day of the week it is (or what month it is) as we live out our boat life, at anchor mostly, in paradise.