Jazzy Lady's 2019/20 Cruising Adventure

Emergency Migration

March 23rd

Within my sight right now (10 mile radius maybe) I can see 14 cruising boats on the move. Usually at any given time we'd have two or three in sight. We've been told there are roughly 1,000 cruiser vessels still here in Bahamas as I write this entry. Mostly American and Canadian boats with a few dozen European, etc. The attitudes among the crews we've chatted with are divided as follows: Half feel their best strategy is to wait out the total pandemonium throughout North America and stay here as long as possible. A quarter have the strong instinct to rush home ASAP. The other quarter seems un-decided (us being one of them), one day feeling this is the safest place, the next day feeling the urge to move north quickly.
We are due into Nassau by the end of tomorrow where we'll top up our provisions for the last time in Bahamas. From there we'll make one more stop further north west in the Berry Islands before we jet into the Gulf Stream. Although we are at a much lower risk than all of you at home of contracting Covid 19 in this neck of the world, anyone with half a brain knows that ALREADY hundreds of cases have probably made their way here via American tourists, considering the fact that it ran rampant un-tracked for two months before the US became informed enough of Covid's MASSIVE impact on it's citizens (not including the President and his Congress who have been informed by Intelligence for much longer than they let on)...that's probably enough political speculating for one entry.
So I am quite petrified of the daunting task we have ahead of us: getting home without being infected. The prospect of provisioning in Nassau scares me and, of course the prospect of provisioning in the States horrifies me. We will order things to be delivered to our boat whenever possible and should only have to do the two stops for supplies: one in Nassau, one in U.S. The number of options we've considered for our homecoming strategy makes my head spin: Sail all the way north ENTIRELY offshore...pretend we're crossing the Atlantic and don't stop until we get there OR sail straight west to Florida and haul the boat at the first possible place...dump boat contents into U Haul and drive home. We even pondered a straight shot north east to Bermuda and then directly north all the way to Halifax to avoid America altogether but...that is just too crazy...and daunting. I'm not THAT good a sailor yet! Our favourite option so far is to get as far north as Deltaville, Virginia. This would be a reasonable middle-ground for leaving the boat, an attainable place to pick up from at some later date to bring JL all the way back to Lake Champlain. We have had a couple of loved ones IMPLORE us to leave Jazzy Lady in Bahamas and fly home. Well, that plane has flown now but when we were pondering it a week ago we agonized over the logistics of it. Even though we know that in a time like this money is no object it is still an excruciating thing to reconcile. It could mean saying goodbye to $75,000. We spent more than this on Jazzy Lady and we believe we could sell her for a bit less than this. Leaving her in Bahamas could mean saying goodbye to that investment. Everything in the boat would rot in this tropical climate (we've already been dealing with moulding items for months). We'd be throwing out most of her contents. Even though we had the luxury of doing this trip, we cannot do it again! We don't have the time or money to come back and sail her home at a later date. We could pay someone to sail her home...at an exorbitant cost. Needless to say, we did not close the latter option and hopefully we won't regret that.
March 25th
We're heading for Berry Islands tomorrow and Freeport after that. I think, deep down, we are partly stalling for time, putting off the inevitable...inching our way north instead of just going for it and jumping across...nobody's perfect. From Freeport we'll cross over to the US coast but it'll all depend on weather as to how far north we get before checking in with U.S customs. We'll be able to do it with a virtual app so no person-to-person contact, hooray! Obviously our goal is to NOT set foot on land ANYWHERE in the US (no offense, my American friends and family). As spring progresses, the weather windows for offshore travel become bigger so here's hoping we have some favourable conditions to atleast make SOME of our decision-making easier. We've had fantastic encouragement and good wishes from an overwhelming number of people, which will give us great momentum on our quest homeward.
Photo: enjoying our blissful boat bubble while we still can