Prior to these activities, Roy finished charging all our new lithium batteries and started to top balance them as well, while Elaine eventually finished reviewing the last of the yacht insurance policies applicable to our “backup route”. However, given that all the policies have the usual “outs” or “gotcha” clauses like “at the discretion of the underwriters” or the favourite airy fairy, open to interpretation “due diligence” and “seaworthiness” clauses with absolutely no parameters or guidelines to ensure compliance, making these types of policies not worth the paper they’re written on, we’ve ruled out a Red Sea passage unless dire circumstances develop in South Africa.
With that out of the way, Elaine was able to finish her review of all our cruising guides and passage planning guides for our planned destinations en route to Richards Bay in South Africa and started the review of all our emergency equipment onboard, specifically the expiring dates thereof, to identify what has to be replaced before our departure from Thailand, all of which is becoming an expensive exercise after all the “hanging around” we’ve had to do these past two years.
Today we woke to a bright, sunny morning and decided to dinghy ashore for breakfast, while taking the opportunity to update all our electronic devices to the latest Apple operating system.
It wasn’t until we were returning to the dinghy that we bumped into a captain we’d met previously off one of the megayachts that is in the marina, who updated us on the latest COVID-19 situation that had developed in the marina, apparently started by one of the marina office staff members who got ill, but, while she works in a separate building / office to everyone else, she was in direct contact with Derek, the marina manager, who has been quarantining since. We’d previously heard that a crew member of another megayacht had contracted the disease and the entire crew was forced to quarantine on the yacht in the quarantine anchorage, but we had no idea of these latest developments. Fortunately we’d last spoken to Derek on the dock a fortnight ago and Roy’s visits to the office to collect our parcels this past week have been brief and secure. Additionally, although the office staff ensure the delivery services disinfect every parcel delivered, Elaine repeats the exercise with everything that comes back onboard, including Roy! It appeared her OCD habits had found a valuable use after all, although it was definitely a little disconcerting that this disease was getting far too close for comfort as we anxiously await our second jab to be fully vaccinated. Unfortunately, it was about to get a whole lot closer before the day was over.
Back onboard, everything we took ashore was sanitised, per our usual practice, following which Roy started regression testing on all the devices that support the Anchor Basic and Anchor Plus applications, finding bugs in the new operating system which have affected the applications; a real hassle, as this occurs with every single Apple operating system release and proves very time-consuming to fix everything.
Elaine spent her time pottering around, but, while she was in the shower, the Marina Dock Master appeared at Paw Paw’s stern with a message that Derek needed to speak to Roy by phone. What unfolded was news neither of us wanted to hear!
Apparently a new cleaner for the Port of Call restaurant had her first day on the job yesterday, but, while these cleaners who work outside of the restaurant’s hours and are not permitted to be in the restaurant when customers are present, called in sick today with suspected COVID-19 and since Roy was the only person in the restaurant yesterday after she had cleaned in the morning, he had to be notified of the situation, although the risk of exposure was considered low, something that hasn’t filled either of us with any great sense of relief. The slightly more worrying part, however, is that both of us were in the restaurant this morning prior to the marina being notified that this cleaner was ill and the restaurant is now closed for two weeks for deep cleaning. Fortunately this cleaner wasn’t in the restaurant today, but we have no idea what exposure the other restaurant staff members have had to her, if any. However, as with all these situations, what is done, is done! There’s nothing we can do, but hope that, since we’ve had no direct contact with this individual, which just as easily could have been an asymptomatic person walking passed us in the street, our stringent and regular precautions have been enough to keep us safe and that the cleaner doesn’t, in fact, have COVID-19. Regardless, all the clothes we wore while in the restaurant are steeping in Dettol as we speak and Roy jumped in the shower too soon after receiving the news, to be sure, to be sure!
Our day ended on a far nicer note, though, with a beautiful starry night before the moon appeared from behind the mountains to the east.
