Back to Britain

The year of COVID suddenly interrupted Tin Tin's cruising plans.  

In March 2020 we had a lovely two week cruise with Emily & Julien from Grenada up to the Tobago Cays, and then exchanged crews for Stuart and Angela.  

Farewell to friends

A week later, whilst anchored in Bequia we learned that COVID was closing borders and stopping flights.  Stuart managed to get flights back from St Vincent, and the following morning we made an early start and got them to the airport.

Terrifying COVID Cruise ships

Anne and I were left wondering how to handle the situation.   Would it all blow over in a month.... or maybe two?  What about the hurricane season?  There was nowhere to lay up in St Vincent.   Could we enjoy April and May cruising the grenadines, our favourite islands, on our own, but still expect Justin and Mark to get here for the sail back to the UK?

How would the disruption of tourism and supply lines affect food supplies and peoples attitudes.  Would poverty bring desperation and attacks on rich yachts?   

We relaxed for a couple of days, hired a car and went exploring the island, and climbed up into wonderful rainforest in the national parks.  Our mooring in the Blue Lagoon was rather rough, so we shifted over between a little island and the shore for quieter water, and from there explored a fascinating fortified rock guarding the entrance to the bay.

Sunset from the Blue Lagoon

Tuesday dawned, and I was able to get wifi from a beach cafe which allowed me to research news of border closures. There was no going back south to Grenada or Trinidad to lay up, but I discovered that Antigua was still open and that there were 90+ yachts waiting to clear in to St Johns!  We finished breakfast and in a hurry I powered back to the Customs to clear out, and also to get wifi at the hotel to change our flights.  It turned out to be easy to change my flight using the BA app, but Ann's required me to speak to an advisor, and despite several calls this looked to be unlikely to happen.  I could see thither were only a couple of seats left in the last flight so I booked a new seat for Anne for the "modest" sum of $1780.   Now all we had to do was to get to Antigua, clear in before they closed the border, find somewhere to store TinTin, and get on our flight home.

Last leg

Our sail north was fast, making 10-11 knots through the night between the islands, and successively passing old friends of St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe and the Iles Saintes.   We were tired as we arrived at the northern end of Guadeloupe, and rather than arrive in the dark in Antigua, I dropped anchor and we had supper and a good sleep.   We set off again at about 4 a.m on the Thursday 26th March in company with one other yacht, and made good time to arrive in a deserted St Johns harbour about 9 a.m.Ashore we found the new COVID clearance and health check to be efficient, and then I set about trying to find somewhere haul Tin Tin out.  The most responsive yard was Jolly Harbour, and a few hours later we were berthed there heaving a very big sigh of relief.  The yard manager, Lindsay, said he could lift us out on Monday, so we had all of Friday to get the boat ready for storage before we flew out midday on Saturday.  

Chatting to other crews facing COVID challenges

Rather inappropriate advertising!

The sea in a bottle?

Our last evening in Antigua

Chatting to other yacht crews, it was clear that everyone was juggling questions of what to do.  Some were planning sail to the US, others to stay put.  A few then decided to haul out but found that we had taken the last lift out slot till June...   We flew home on a jammed British Airways evacuation flight, being given a mask, bottle of water and a sandwich box.  No inflight catering and no bar trolley, but at least the back of seat screens could deliver films.

Back in Blighty

We arrived to find Emily & Julien had kindly delivered the car full of groceries so that we could go off to quarantine in St Mawes.  We weren't wanted at the Mill Farm as Audrey (98) was being isolated and cared for by Emily & Julien.  The roads of Cornwall were eerily deserted  and we felt very, very visible as the only car on the road 

Empty roads for 250 miles to Cornwall

Quarantine supplies

So we enjoyed a wonderful peaceful six weeks in astonishingly good Spring weather, swimming every day in the icy sea, walking five miles a day along the coastal paths and learning to identify the abundance of Spring flowers.

Fast forward to 2021, and my plans to sail back across the Atlantic with Mark and Justin were eventually curtailed by availability and COVID restrictions.  Richard kindly encouraged me to ship Tin Tin home and now she will be loading in Antigua on 28th May and arriving in Southampton on about 10th June.

Prior to shipment I commissioned Chris Waelen to try to repair the lifting teak deck, and then potentially replacing it but he had problems obtaining enough teak.  So instead he stripped it back to metal, and Abu and his team at Caribbean Marine Painting did a great job repainting all the white bits, and creating a non-slip deck. I'm looking forward to seeing TinTin in her new paint.  She should be a lot lighter without the teak too.

There were a few minor dramas along the way.  Peters & May shipping contract specifies a $19,000/day demurrage fee if your boat delays their shipment - effectively the same cost as the shipment itself.  So i wanted to make sure that the engine would work on the day.  P&M specify a window of between 5-25 May for shipment, so I arranged to launch on 30th April so that Ivan of Extreme Marine could service the engine.   But it refused to start and the culprit was the Volvo 'black box' engine management system that I'd had to replace under warranty in Guadeloupe in 2019.   It also seemed that all the batteries were dead, so I had to buy an engine start battery and a single 'house' battery to run the instruments.    

On the upside 'Dora', Emily's paddle-board, has been retrieved from 'hospital' in Grenada, and kindly sailed up to Antigua aboard yacht 'Vela' by her kind skipper Tom, who is even now battling back across the Atlantic with a scratch crew recruited in Antigua.  

Once back in Southampton Tin Tin is booked in with Knight Marine to review her charging system which has given problems all round the world.