We have been in St. Lucia since March 12. We are approaching a month here and could be here for another two weeks. St. Lucia has been our mid-season extended stop off island for many years. Between November and June the mid-season break usually ends up being a somewhat M&R stop. That is the way it has been this time also. M&R dental work for both of us, medical lab work for Maureen, and M&R for Kalunamoo. We are at anchor and only go into the marina if needed. Our generator was acting up (actually not acting up – no output) and so we went into the marina for 3 days for repairs. It was a relatively easy fix, new brushes were installed.
Not that we are complaining all that much. As the years go by, we spend more time anchoring at the islands we call, taking advantage of living aboard as opposed to hustling island to island. This slower pace started here 6 years ago.
In 2020, we arrived in St. Lucia in March. We didn’t leave until November. You may recall it was the first of two Pandemic Seasons. At that time, we just had the engine oil cooler on Kalunamoo replaced here and we were ready to sail south. The only trouble was that all the islands were “closing down” the day after the new cooler was installed. Travel restrictions, covid test (PCR and quick test), masks, social distancing, and restricting businesses were the order of the day (or week). No one knew the extent or duration of the closures, nor the long-term prospects of reopening. It was certainly a change of pace and lifestyle!
We fared well here. Never did get covid and eventually sailed north to Antigua in November. The pandemic was still around and so we stayed in Antigua until May and returned to St Lucia to repeat our long stay again.
After those two years, the desire to travel outside the Eastern Caribbean waned. Older and wiser – I’m not sure which (definitely older), but we are inclined to do less island hoping. Traveling to new lands can, and has been taken, by jet during the summer!
One advantage of longer stays on each island is that the cruisers we know sailing up and down “stop in” and so we get to spend time with them as they pass through. There is also a fair turnover of cruisers. Many “swallow the hook” and sell their boat,sail off to other lands, or depart for life’s alternative adventures. New cruisers arrive and the cycle repeats itself.
Of course, the world keeps turning despite what we do. Maybe even despite what we want to do! Monumental happenings occur but so often we hear, “It doesn’t affect me”. It is a fact that most of these events don’t affect the vast majority of humankind. At least not immediately or directly. The pandemic, on the other hand, affected almost everyone. And those mostly benign effects, even today, are still hotly contested. Other events, like wars, are just 5-minute segments on the 7 PM news, just before switching to Netflix. A few months later, they fade into oblivion. But much like a hurricane in a distant land we may only experience a low ocean swell rocking the boat in a protected harbor, a slight inconvenience but never experiencing any devastation. Maybe the price of something goes up a marginal amount and we get upset. What’s worse, however, we become immune to those far away disruptions that have little effect on our daily lives. Justifications and rationalizations ensue and we go further down the slippery slope we humans are prone to follow. History is rewritten in our favor. Living “offshore”, those effects are further minimalized but are glaringly apparent from afar. It is for that reason we do try to keep up with events far from Kalunamoo’s gunwale. If, for no other reason, it does affect our sensibilities, and sometimes it feels like Dej Vu.
Kalunamoo 