The sun rapidly disappears below the horizon leaving the sky colored pink, red, yellow and purple. The last miles to Barbados are ticking away slowly as we still keep on sailing in the little wind that is left behind the island. For the first time in a while we smell land again and enjoy the different kinds of birds. Once anchored and after a cup of tea we all fall into a restless sleep. Most of us are now so used to waking up on our shift that our body has gotten used to it and wakes up without alarm. So even though we had planned to sleep in, that didn’t really happen. I started out early trying to reach customs and immigration by VHF to find out what the current procedures are. Towards the end of the morning Guppy is directed to the commercial port where we had to moor up to the cruiseschip terminal… I wasn’t very pleased with that as it’s a big concrete wall with huge shock blocks every 15meters. So at least Guppy is big enough to not fall in between. But it is far from ideal, especially as some surge runs into the Harbour. Now we wait, we don’t dare to go ashore as that is strictly forbidden. Especially with the new COVID rules. So we watch as small containerships and tugs come in and out. At some stage customs come by, so I spend some time filling out lots of paperwork. He tells us we need to do a PCR test which a doctor will come to do. We continue cleaning up and trying to connect to the very weak WiFi signal we can receive. Then a car stops next to us with a man who explains he is the doctor and he needs to take our tests. He is very kind to us and takes the test in a good and quiet manner, quite the opposite from La Gomera where I had the feeling she thought she was stirring in a soup rather than taking a COVID test. I really didn’t want to spend the night here so I tried a few more times with the authorities if we could go out and anchor to wait out our quarantine period. He eventually agreed to it 🙂 So now we are anchored in front of Bridgetown. We have to stay onboard for the next 3-4 days until we get our test results back. We also managed to get permission to swim and sail the minicats just as long as we don’t visit any other yachts and stay close to Guppy. So I am sure we won’t get bored 😉
Laura
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