Well, it's official folks. We're not allowed to move from the atoll we just arrived at. That's the new reality for the forseeable future, maybe 2 - 6 weeks while corona virus hopefully burns itself out here in French Polynesia.
What we've heard about vessels arriving from Mexico or Panama or wherever is that they'll be required to self-isolate for 14 days, then given time to make repairs, reprovision, and then they must sail for Tahiti, put the boat in storage and depart the country. Given that most folks would have been at sea for around 3 weeks already, that 14 day thing might be a misunderstanding, but altogether it ain't pretty. There are going to be some pretty bummed out sailors. Don't know what this might mean for our pals down in New Zealand that would be making preparations to sail up to Vanuatu or wherever, as many smaller countries are effectively closing their borders.
We learned all this today when we arrived at Raroia. We slowed JollyDogs down so that we got to the pass just after dawn, the tide still flowing out with the wind, so no wind over tide condition. Even though the "tidal guestimator" figured it for slack tide, we had nearly 4 knots on the bow but with no standing waves it was pretty much a non-event and we simply powered through. We motored about a mile to the village, dropped the hook and had a visit with the folks on two other yachts in the anchorage. Didn't even go ashore. About that time a third vessel showed up, a beautiful cold water boat from Poland. We had been tracking them on AIS for about 2 days and as we were working out way through the pass Isabel advised them of the conditions over the VHF; the elected to wait a little while to let the current slack off some.
So now we're at Raroia with (we think) 4 other boats. Once the sun got up pretty high we weighed anchor and motored about 6 miles across the atoll to the East side. As the wind is predominately from the East, tucking up against the motus and reef sections over here reduces fetch to almost nothing, so even if the wind howls the water is flat. Turns out we're anchored about ½ mile from where Thor Heyerdahl crash landed the Kon Tiki raft back in the 1940's, tomorrow we'll dinghy over there and look for the monument commemorating his adventure.
The supply ship with provisions is expected in about 3 weeks, so we'll likely wander back down to the village then for some fresh veggies and whatever else might be available. We'll need cooking gas in around 6 weeks so we'll see about getting a cylinder of butane to recharge our on-board cylinders. Isabel swears we've got enough food to easily pig out for 2-3 months, we'll just run out of veggies, fruit and leafy greens. We scored enough limes and pamplemouse to avoid scurvy so our teeth won't fall out of our head. Perhaps our biggest risk is running out of CO2 cylinders for our SodaStream machine. We do love our fizzy water and lime sundowner cocktail.
Nothing to do now but get out the guitar and ukulele and start making noise. Maybe some daily workouts on the SUPs. A little yoga on the foredeck or the beach. Snorkel and look at amazing marine life. Get the kite board gear out and start working on our skills. Do a boat project here and there. Walk on the beach and look for interesting shells. Pick a new e-book from the several thousand we have on board (that's one heavy hard disk). Write a blog post to bore my friends. Meditate. Learn to speak Polish. Find out which fish are safe to eat, then poke 'em with a spear gun.
We get a text news feed from Reuters when we request it. No Fox, CNN or other mainstream noise. Sound like the world is pretty nuts out there. This self-isolation thing ain't so bad. Rip Van Winkle might have had a good idea!
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