The last blog post is dated at the end of 2019 so I am more than a little overdue for an update. There were no
traveling stories to tell for the pandemic times, then I
got too busy to write when the traveling
life resumed.
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| Nomad departing Suriname. |
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| Lunch break while biking near Domburg. |
With Nomad safely
moored in Domburg I went to the
USA to do some jobs and catch up with
family and friends, returning on the
first day of 2020. A few months were
spent doing maintenance, meeting up with friends and touring the Suriname river.
With my three month tourist visa expiring at the end of March it was time to
move on. I decided on Martinique as the
next port of call to meet up with my friends on Fai Tira and find a boatyard to haul out for a bottom painting before
heading north in the springtime. It was
an uneventful six hundred miles to the
anchorage at St Anne's. Little did I
know that this would be Nomad's last sail for nearly two years!
Enroute to Martinique.
I was searching for a
suitable place to leave Nomad so I could position myself
to be ready for an upcoming
delivery job when the call came in that it was being postponed indefinitely
due to the burgeoning pandemic. It
was a very fortunate bit of timing as
the world locked down on travel a few days later. Had I departed I would have been trapped in the USA with no way to return home!
Martinique turned out to be a very fortuitous choice for an unplanned extended stay. With the reasonable cost of living and laid back culture those of
us who spent the pandemic in Martinique on our boats were far better off than cruisers in many other
countries.
So what does one do for 21 months in a harbor on an island when
going ashore becomes a high risk activity? Weekly bottom scrubbing
as I was overdue for fresh bottom paint. Making new friends and helping them
fix and build things. Make a junk rig sail for the dinghy. Dinners with a small
close group of friends. Late night urban foraging. Trying to keep Nomad from rusting away in the endless tropical rains. And so much more. Some of
these activities are interesting enough
to warrant their own story on the blog and
will be the subject of upcoming
posts.
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Sunset over Diamond Rock.
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| Local racing boat. |
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Not much bottom paint left!
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| Red land crab . |
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| Beach hiking near St Anne's. |
Late November of 2021 travel restrictions began to moderate and I was able to gain
entry to Carriacou with additional paperwork
and testing requirements . It was
an all too brief but uneventful sail from Martinique with only a broken batten to repair on
arrival. Immediately after being processed through the quarantine anchorage and clearing
in I got quotes from both boatyards and
began to source materials for the
haulout. Within couple weeks of arrival Nomad was on dry land
for her much needed bottom job. As boat
projects frequently do it grew from a quick bottom painting job to a 137 day marathon of boat
projects which will be the topic of the
next blog post.
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| Hauling out in Carriacou |
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