Plan C
03 July 2021 | Can’t get between a girl and her GS1200
Stuart Letton
We went out for a sail the other day. Nothing special, just a change of scenery but then, a moment of excitement. “Look, look!!” shouted Anne pointing at the instruments as the odometer clicked through 50,000 miles. Right enough, only about ten thou of these are by us although, together, the two Bandits have racked up somewhere over sixty thousand. No wonder we’re exhausted.
The funny thing about all this sailing is that, no matter how long you’ve “been out” or how far you’ve sailed, just when you’re feeling a little bit smug, your sundowner, socially distanced guests and new best friends can easily top it. “Ooh la la” said the French lady we met in the Maldives, en route Red Sea, “we’ve been cruising for forty years”. Yikes. She is a GP and he a boat builder so every time they needed to top up the coffers they’d just pull over and work until the piggy bank was full enough to cover their modest costs for the next trip. OK. The cruising life beats working but come on: FORTY YEARS!
Here in Seychelles, schooner Windjammer said “Oh, we’ve been through your Caledonia Canal. It was lovely, a bit like the Falklands and Patagonia”. Double yike.
Such travels put our little Trade Wind jaunt in perspective. Our new Seychelles buddies were obviously a bold and adventuresome couple, recently landed here from far flung and darkest Africa.
We once had burning ambitions to cruise Patagonia, and dine in the now threatened Micalvi, the southernmost yacht club in the world ( https://www.yachtmollymawk.com/2016/07/micalvi/ ) but I guess we got waylaid in the sunshine of the tropics and sights and sounds, both audible and geographical. Mostly though, over the years lounging around the tropics we’ve just got comfortable. And perhaps lazy. We’re also not very bold travellers. I mean, it took many, many years for me to try a cappuccino. Consequently, we’re in a bit of a dither here as to what to do next, although of course, we only just got here.
Our options are five months in the Seychelles archipelago, “it must be hell” you must be thinking. The Plan B option is to head for AFRICA. More yikes. Tanzania to be exact. Unfortunately, as up until the last couple of months they neither measured nor treated Covid, I suspect it may be rampant.
Another downside of Tanzania is that the wind angle for getting south, come October is even worse than from here and as we’re clearly now fair wind cruisers that sounds like awfully hard work.
So, for the moment, locked out of the UK unless we do a ten day sentence in a Heathrow hotel bedroom, Plan A of going home to see the family is scuppered. Plan B of Tanzania seems a bit of an unnecessary risk so right up until this afternoon we were going to grin and bear it here. Murder. I know.
That was until Anne’s wee sister mentioned this afternoon that one of her Scottish pals went home via Iceland from locked down Malaysia. Instead of spending her ten day hotel quarantine money in a dodgy Heathrow Ibis, she had a ten day holiday in Reykjavik...... which sounds an awful lot nicer than Heathrow.
And they’ve motorbikes for rent!!!
Gotta go. Plan C needs some work.