For those following along at home, we’re on our third quarantine of this pandemic, in our third country. This is the strictest one yet: 14 days of quarantine on our sailboat, no trips ashore for any reason (no groceries, no exercise, no essential shopping), no water sports. At the end of the two week quarantine, we’ll take a Covid-19 test and once we pass we’ll finally be free to clear customs and immigration and enter Grenada officially.

So what do we do to pass the time in quarantine? A whole lot of nothing, lol! 😀 I’m not even kidding. We definitely experienced a sort of quarantine malaise…where the priority is simply enduring until it’s over and hopefully surviving with our sanity (and our marriage) intact.

We arrived at the early side of our week’s window. So Capt. Mike stayed fully engaged over the next few days watching new boats arrive, following them on the VHF radio and using binoculars. When a boat attempted to anchor near Sanitas, Mike would pull on his fins and snorkel, jump in the water, and help the new arrivals place the anchor securely in the mix of shallow sand and dead coral. Mango Mike’s Anchoring Service, open for business! For the entire quarantine period, he kept an eye on “his boats” making sure they stayed in place through squalls and wind shifts. We learned a new anchoring technique that they don’t teach you in ASA 101 – pile a few rocks on your anchor to weigh it down. Bonus points for a smiley face.

After the rough passage, our salon is always a huge mess, so we killed a day or so airing out the sheets and making everything ship-shape.

And there’s always boat chores! During periods of great motivation we defrosted the fridge, and I cleaned all of the stainless steel on Sanitas’ deck.

Spirits lagged around Day #5, so we dug deep for entertainment. Three times per week, fellow cruisers took turns hosting trivia over the radio for happy hour. Apparently we need a bigger trivia team – Team Sanitas was lucky to score over 50% One day, I put together a Bingo card for objects we might see around the anchorage and invited every boat within shouting distance to join our WhatsApp group and radio finale. It kept us entertained all afternoon: “Hey! I see someone rowing his dinghy!”, “Is that boat the Coast Guard? Darn, it’s just marina staff”, “Why isn’t anyone exercising on their deck?” At the end of the day, Sanitas was the only team without a BINGO – I’ll have to make it harder next time.

Sometimes I was motivated to cook….

Other times, especially when the temperature hit the mid-90s, I could barely be bothered to prepare cheese and crackers or to add a few sautéed veggies to a carton of soup. One very special Friday, we ordered takeout from Eden Sushi 🍣 with our friends on Holiday and enjoyed a virtual meal together over video chat. The closest marina allows deliveries from approved vendors, but only to the Q dock with all payments made on-line, and masks required, and deliveries only allowed on certain days before 5:00 pm.

I killed the better part of an entire afternoon trying to open a coconut I bought during our last provisioning trip in Antigua. It’s harder than you’d think!

And we read … and watched Netflix … and listened to podcasts … and played games … you didn’t expect this to be an exciting blog post, did you? I really, really wish we had unlimited wifi!

Just this morning, a rogue squall came out of nowhere and wind speeds changed from less than 10 knots to over 40 knots in seconds. You know what they say about long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror? I was washing the breakfast dishes and Mike was talking to his mom on the phone when we both had to drop everything. We started the engine (without all of the usual pre-start checks), turned on the anchor windlass, dropped our dinghy Bug in the water before she flew away, and braved torrential rain while making sure that none of the boats whose anchors dragged in the high winds ran into us. Mango Mike’s Anchoring Service had a lot of satisfied customers!

Thanks for following along on this tale of boredom. Good news! Writing this blog post killed most of the afternoon of Day #12. Less than two days to go!