If there is any cure for the COVID blues it’ll be offshore sailing. Next week the crews of both boats arrive in Annapolis for what will be an epic passage south. Our goal is Antigua, over 1,600 miles from Annapolis, normally a 10-11 day passage or so. But with COVID, the island is requiring all entering yachts to quarantine for 14-days on arrival, but they count sea time. So we’ll just stay out there. The plan is to sail east and around Bermuda, giving us the chance to call in at the island if we have any weather concerns or COVID scares among the crew. Everybody has to show up to the boat with a negative test, but still, shit happens, so we have Bermuda as a bailout. Then, if we have to, we’ll sail all the way south to Barbados or Grenada, just to add time. Being at sea and on the move for three extra days is far more appealing to me than sitting on anchor in Falmouth Harbor for three days after having been at sea for 11. Uncertainty is the name of the game for an offshore passage in normal times what with weather and seasons and everything. Maybe the COVID uncertainty is just something we’ll have to live with in offshore sailing going forward. Flexible schedules, flexible itineraries. Who knows, next week will give me a preview anyway.
The world could change yet again next week, and we might be bound for St. Maarten or USVI or stuck here in port. To make it even crazier, we’re in the midst of a historically active hurricane season – only once before, in 2005, have we gotten to ZETA in the Greek alphabet when naming storms. If you’re counting that’s 27 named storms in the Atlantic this year…21 in the English alphabet (for obvious reasons we don’t use Q,U,X,Y or Z names), and now six in the Greek. If we get just one more named storm this year it’ll be an all-time record.
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