Cruise planning: Caribbean and COVID
Cruising the Caribbean takes strategy and planning in a pandemic, says Hermione Pattison
Strategic sailing in a pandemic
Our three-month visas for Antigua and Barbuda were up and our next destination needed to be strategic, rather than ‘romantic’.
Every island group has different entry criteria in this pandemic, so going anywhere is complex, confusing and expensive. Most countries require negative PCR tests, and costs range from zero to $300 per test. Some countries require tests plus a 14-day quarantine. And what is written in the online guidance is not always what other cruisers report.
We decided to head north from Antigua to explore the Bahamas. For the hassle and expense of entering a country, the Bahamas offers us a very large cruising ground for three months.
Going directly from Antigua would have seriously dented our cruising budget as the cost of PCR tests in the Bahamas is very high. So we decided to stop off in St Martin, which has no test requirements to enter, and where PCR tests are much more affordable. There is also fantastic access to marine supplies and provisioning allowing us to prepare properly for the next step.
Happy hour chat with other cruisers (St Martin has endless happy hours – a definite upside of the island) has revealed that nobody seems to have a firm plan. By the sheer nature of cruising, plans were historically always loose, but generally people knew whether they were heading north, south, east or west. Not any more!
There seem to be a number of family boats heading to the Bahamas with us. Some have delayed their Pacific plans for another year, in the hope that more islands will be open in 2022. We are really excited to have some good company for the next phase of our adventure.
Our crew now also consists of a qualified primary school teacher, Jess, who has been tutoring Alice and Arthur every weekday morning since November. This is such a relief for me and Douglas.
Teaching our children had become almost impossible with tears and tantrums most days. With her experience, Jess has done some wonderful and exciting projects using the surroundings to guide their learning, while Douglas and I can carry out boat maintenance, admin and provisioning – to name just a few of our daily tasks – without the children in tow.
I’m frantically writing lists of things we will need, knowing from previous experience that basics and essentials can be difficult or expensive to obtain outside of the main inhabited islands in the Bahamas. Meanwhile, Douglas is busy trying to identify which extra spares to take alongside carrying out maintenance jobs while the going is good.
St Martin has many upsides but we cannot help feeling sad seeing the plethora of boat wrecks from Hurricane Irma still littering the lagoon. We are definitely ready to move on.