I am not trying to get too heady for you here in the beginning but… one of the things I was trying to show you with the last blog post was that… in the post modern world… where Truth has been killed by deconstructionism and we all know we all live with beliefs not truths… and we get to be the authors of our own version of reality… we can choose our own frames of reference to view the world around us.
So in my writing one of the challenges is for me to consciously choose what frame of reference to write from, which version of reality shall I choose to share with you for either your personal edification or perhaps simply your amusement…? Hmmmm…. and if you have been following me… you know I prefer the controversial version over the popular one, optimists just abhor my works. I wonder how many optimists saw or believed this GLOBAL pandemic was coming or even possible… ? Hmmm… the sunny disposition has no tolerance for a world where bad things can and do happen.
Well enough of that for now lets dive in…
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Life in Antigua Last Week
As I shared last Blog we had a lovely time checking into Antigua on the very day they first began to close down their ports. Despite the “fun times” we made it in and Antigua is a very lovely place to be. The local people are all very well educated and speak English which is good for those of us who share this in common. The island is more flat than most of these Caribbean islands which means, without the massive unusable mountains of the other islands they have had more space to stretch out in. For us sailors this also mean nice shallow bays and a curvy shoreline providing sweet little protected spots for us to anchor in.
WildChild has remained here at anchor just north of Jolly Harbor in New Division bay for a little more than a week now. We had it really good here for most of this time. As we heard from other sailors that other islands were shutting down and restricting peoples movements Antigua was blissfully calm and completely unaffected. Other than the government centralizing all water borne traffic to enter and exit thru St. Johns harbour there were no other restrictions at all, the Antigua government was quite silent.
Slowly we noticed the absence of cruise ships and tourists and quickly it was just the locals and us cruisers wandering around. Although this cruising lifestyle is, by its own nature, a rather isolated existence, when we did wander out in public the locals were going about their business as usual. Antiguan’s are a mellow and calm bunch generally, they remind me of Bahamain’s (not sure how to spell people from Bahamas??) Mellow friendly and kind as a group.
I had taken the silence of the government to mean that perhaps they had found and identified the 6 people who had the virus, had quarantined everyone they had come into contact with, and the situation was well in hand here on this island. It seemed like a natural conclusion. With the island isolated now, it was quite possible they may have succeeded in locking the virus down, as of today there are ZERO cases of CoVid19 in Barbuda.
Slowly over the last week I have listened to word trickle in from sailor friends on other islands and thought myself so very fortunate to have been spared. The French islands were the first to lock down, last week they forced all cruisers not to leave their boats without special permission and only for necessary provisions. The coast guard was intercepting boats even near their waters and turning them away. The same thing in the Bahamas. Dominica had little government response. Saint Martin was locked down pretty tight with new restrictions coming in everyday. Dominican Republic brought in the navy ship to blockade the channel for Luperon and quarantined the sailors on their boats.
Then there began to come word that some islands were kicking out the cruisers..! Isle De Saints was the first one I heard of. Then I heard from other friends in Guadaloupe that the mayors were given permission to take whatever steps they thought necessary and one mayor ordered all the cruisers in the bay to leave, go away. Puerto Rico completely closed down its borders and is even refusing Americans entry or movement.
Clearly the world has gone mad.
Everything has remained so calm and quiet here in Antigua, it has been great.
Until Recently, the government woke up Monday (March 30th 2020)
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Antigua the last few days
Tuesday (March 31st 2020 … 2 days ago for me now) I decided that maybe this island might have a TV broadcasting station I could try to pick up on my TV. My antenna had not been working for a while now and I had suspected that maybe the coax cable had gotten corroded. I decided to make the effort to try and resolve the issue and see if I can find some local news. Captain Lexi is pretty handy with techy things and in short order I had fixed the problem and ran the auto tuner on the TV and voila… I found 2… yes count em… TWO local TV stations.
My timing was brilliantly interesting because the first thing that popped up on the TV screen was the Government of Antigua having an online conference call for parliament. The president of the country was just announcing that he was about to implement restrictions to try and deal with this Virus. It seems that a cargo ship had entered port a few days ago, the captain lied on the health declaration forms and said nobody on his crew was sick when he knew he had 40 Trinidadian crew members sick with the virus. The president was kinda pissed off on the TV and saying that if people do not act responsibly he is forced to institute further restrictions as other countries are doing.
Starting tomorrow Wednesday April 1st Antigua in going into quarantine. Social distancing, closed school essential services only, stores only open 8am until noon and a night time curfew.
Uh oh… there goes our good thing here in Antigua… the Virus has arrived..!
I looked over to Elena and said… “oh shit… we had better go right now in the dinghy the 3 miles around the mountain to Jolly harbor for one last provisioning…” We had not left the boat for the last week but we were planning to go to the store in this coming week sometime. We are very well provisioned for like the next 6 months so there has been nothing that we really needed on shore… or was there…?
In any case it seems the crazy was about to hit us too and it was time to try and get in one last provisioning before the panic starts. It is a long dinghy ride for our little 4hp dinghy motor to go the 3 miles out into open ocean to get around the mountains to the grocery store in Jolly harbor but… it was time to slap it in B for Bogey and make the run. We added extra gas to our little gas can to give us enough fuel to get there and back and jumped in right away. We got lucky in that the winds were calm that day and the ocean was calm, our little dinghy could quickly get into trouble and overpowered if mom got moody, the ocean is often a nasty place.
On a calm ocean in gentle winds we made it out into the open ocean and around the mountain to get into Jolly harbor. What impressed me is that we made it all the way there without having to refuel midway. I was uncertain our built in fuel tank on the new engine could get 3 miles to a tank. This meant that for sure we would have enough fuel to get back after provisioning.
It was by now around 3pm in the afternoon when we arrived. We found the dinghy dock without much trouble, followed another dinghy in, got tied up and found the grocery store right across the street. Jolly harbour really is a lovely place and I wish I had room to share all the interesting pictures I took of the place for you. I understand why it is so popular. We had also brought in some garbage and had to find a place to dump it. There was something on the morning cruisers net about a garbage bin across the road in the parking lot?
It was around 3:30pm in the afternoon and I had figured that with curfew being started tomorrow everything should be normal today. The store should still be open until its usual time and we should beat the panic that will come tomorrow when the restrictions start.
WRONG….!
As soon as I saw this I thought oh crap, I guess I wasn’t the only one to catch this mornings broadcast. You can see that people are all very calm, they are nicely practicing social distancing. Everything going as it should… but… my heart sank… the line just to get in is all the way around the corner..!
I send Elena to go find the back of the line and start the wait. I go to the front of the line to do some recon. I start asking people at the front of the line, hey how long did it take in line to get this far up, ohh two hours… oh crap… I start asking the security people, what time does the store close… 6pm…
Hmmm… it is 3:40pm right now… the wait will be at least 2 hours maybe more and the store closes in 2hours and 20 minutes… is this even worth the wait? Do we really need anything this badly…? How important is fresh bread and fresh vegetables anyway? Standing in the sun for 2 hours was not in my plans for the day.
Decisive Captain that I am (said with tongue in cheek) I decide YES we will wait it out, better today than tomorrow, this will only get worse.
This island is completely dependent on tourism for its economy.
This island is completely dependent on cargo ships to bring them all of their food, they produce almost nothing for themselves.
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Life of Essentials
Now I know all of you are going through your own version of this. I know everyone of you have your own stories to tell. I know this affects all of you. All of you have been practicing social distancing for a while now, so none of this is new to you. So lets assume none of it is, therefore, interesting enough to talk about.
Nasty Virus… Be afraid… blah blah blah…
And so we all hunker down in our respective bunkers and wait this out praying nobody we know dies of it.
For us girls on WildChild I must say we are in a spectacular position to sit this nasty thing out. We are in a beautiful Caribbean country with nice weather all year around. We live completely off the grid in a fully independent yacht. We have a water maker and make our own water. We have like 6 months worth of food all the time anyway. We can use the wind to move about the planet for free. We have 3 Terrabytes of digital media to keep us occupied. We have internet access on our lovely, cheap, french SIM card. I have Virtual Reality goggles to escape my prison when it becomes too much for me.
For whatever mysterious reason it suddenly became important we have lots of toilet paper.
See Lexi being a berry berry mart girl (so sayeth little Dakota when he was 4 years old) I knew something was coming. We are quite prepared.
I knew that if you ask the world to stay home from work, you are going to trigger a global financial recession the likes of which we have never seen. We do not have jobs to lose, but you guys all do. We have money in the bank for savings though. The banks are going to freeze up all of our money soon (like they did in Greece in 2008) to prevent us from running on cash they do not have to give us. I had gone into town 2 weeks ago and started withdrawing all the money from the bank that I could.
When we went to pay for our groceries my bank card was frozen, good thing I was smart enough to get cash BEFORE this started huh. Were you smart enough to get cash on hand 2 weeks ago?
Are you SURE your country will not freeze the banks?
Last week in Panama the government there suddenly and without warning banned all sales of alcohol every where in the whole country. It seems they decided that having the whole country out of work, stuck at home bored, and beginning to run out food , maybe being drunk might lead to riots.
Are you sure your country will not follow suit?
Are you stocked up on wine and liquor to get you through the coming 2 months of boredom? We are.
In 2 words… WE’RE GOOD…!
Or are we….?
So if you have been following for a while now… you know Captain Lexi has a pretty serious chocolate milk addiction. The whole reason for our foray to the grocery store Tuesday was to resupply Lexi’s milk supply. So I am now fully restocked on milk… for now… see milk expires in a week… then what ever shall I do…?
This morning the President of Antigua came on TV and suddenly out of the Blue announced total lock down for the whole country… 24 hours a day for the next 7 days… nobody but essential workers can leave their homes…
well… my chocolate milk supply will only last a week… What then…?
I have Nurse Elena prepared to get me thru my with drawl symptoms next week. This pandemic is just going to be hell for me on WildChild. Life without chocolate milk is obviously completely untenable right..?
But the stores will open soon right…?
The food will be restocked on the shelves soon right…?
Are you sure…?
Now I do not want to be alarmist or anything… but are you sure that with nobody going to work now… all international ports closed… no ships coming from China for over a month now… no migrant workers to work the agricultural sector during planting season right now… are you sure the worlds food supply is so abundant that we have enough food in reserve that you will not feel any disruption in the food supply chain in a few months.
The head of the United Nations agricultural division is not so sure.
I am going to include some links in this blog for you to follow up if you are interested… There is a very smart guy I have been following for a while now who has been warning that even before this virus came we were teetering on the edge of a global food shortage that started last year.
His YouTube is called Yanasa Ama and he released an interesting video this week WARNING ON GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY about the food supply chain globally. You might want to click on that blue link above and have a look for yourself, you know you have time. It’s a long rant but he is a very well informed guy.
If you are curious about the current global great depression we are now in that is easy enough for you to find yourself, just type it in and you will see lots of stuff about that.
What I did find interesting in my YouTube hunting however… was a video of a Doctor talking about where this virus came from. He shows you the journal article taking credit for creating this virus in 2015…. The video is called…
Dr. Rashid Buttar: “It was discussed in 2015 that this should not be done!” I thought it was interesting at the very least. So at least we know who to blame for all this. In a biolab in America a Chinese and an American scientist were playing with this BAT virus and manipulated its DNA to see if it could cross the species barrier and it seems they succeeded. The Chinese scientist was allowed to bring their new virus creation home to his lab in Wuhan China, where it seems, they lost control of it last year.
This affects all of us… I noticed across the bay from us there is the rich people in their 100 million dollar yacht and a solo poor french sailor in his 30 foot poor yacht, same bay, same sunset, hiding from the same virus.
Who knows where all this crazy crap will lead. None of us can be sure.
But I think you can be sure nothing will ever go “back to normal” again.
Ahhh… panic the Titanic is Sinking….
No relax don’t worry everything is fine…
Stock pile and horde global disaster is coming…
Enjoy the sunset this will all blow over in a month or two…
Our view this evening right now as I write this, everything is pretty calm in my world. I think I will go have a glass of chocolate milk just because I can and cherish the luxury.
Cheers Sailor Fans…
Sorry I don’t have nicer things to say…
Captain Lexi
. …….. the bored ………..