We never would have imagined …

Who could have imagined just how much the world would change since November, 2019 when I last blogged? Looking back on it, I can hardly believe it. For three months or so, we worked so hard at preparing for our return to Tonga: ordering parts and supplies unavailable in Tonga, sewing improvements to our canvas, replacing worn out equipment, updating our electronic charts, renewing prescriptions, gathering with family and friends as much as we could, scheduling routine medical visits, booking our return flights, and even splurging on a new camera and some other electronics. We accumulated almost 200 pounds of stuff to bring back to Tonga, and packed it all neatly in collapsible suitcases, ready for the return flight.

We also dealt with some unexpected medical issues in those first few months home. Cindy had sinus surgery to remove an absess that turned out to be caused by the decay of a dead tooth leaking into her sinuses, so the surgery was followed by several visits to the dentist. Meanwhile, Rick fell off a ladder when it twisted out from underneath him while trimming a tree and broke several bones in his leg, and had surgery to fix what was broken.

And his surgery was just in the nick of time. It was the last one performed in our local hospital before they completely shut down the surgical unit due to Covid. WTF? Before we knew it, Tongan borders were closed to all foreigners, and remain closed as of this writing, 15 months later. Just like much of the world, we became cloistered in our home for over a year, socializing in person not even with family. The good news is that six years of spending 24 hours per day together on a small boat in foreign lands prepared us well for life during Covid: we knew how to be together constantly, just the two of us, without driving each other crazy, we were accustomed to supply shortages, and we had plenty to keep us busy because we had been gone for so long. It almost seemed normal, if the circumstances causing it weren’t so impossibly abnormal.

We made the most of this difficult time, as best we could, and we were fortunate to have no fatalities in our family, at least so far. A niece did have heart complications due to Covid, and of course we all have known people who succumbed, but we both tried really hard to follow all the protocols and I guess we were amongst the lucky ones. We are now both fully vaccinated and are feeling better about being in public although we still wear masks in crowded places – I guess Covid has changed our worldview forever.

We decided to take advantage of the time home by addressing much of the deferred maintenance accumulating on our home. We hired contractors to lay a cement pad under our carport, to paint the house, and to cut down beloved but ailing or threatening trees. Rick installed a generator to prepare for summer power outages, and we put Cindy’s pottery studio back together. Cindy enrolled in online (Zoom) French classes and Rick resumed his Duo Lingo Spanish classes. And we got back together with our Rueda dance group, virtually, every week on Zoom to practice moves, each couple in their own home.

We tried everything to find a way to get back to Tonga during Covid, but nothing worked. We had done a good job of decommissioning Cool Change, but it was only supposed to be a matter of months before we got back, not years. The Vava’u Boatyard gave us a 10% discount for the duration of Covid lockdown, but still, we are paying a premium rate for storage in their yard, about double what a slip in the San Francisco Bay would cost. And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it but continue to pay. If it weren’t for the fact that absolutely no one has any sympathy whatsoever for our challenges of having a yacht stuck in the South Pacific, this would be a really sad story! And oh, the thought of what is happening to our boat just sitting there in the tropics all this time is almost too much to bear. The water maker, for example, a $7,000 piece of equipment, is not supposed to sit unused for more than six months. We will likely have to replace the most expensive parts of it. The electronics will have weathered at least two cyclone seasons by the time we return, perhaps three, and who knows what condition they will be in. The pumps are probably all stuck, the teak could be full of mold, and on and on … oh my gosh. The worst is, we really won’t know what parts we need to replace until we get there, and Tonga has virtually no boat parts for sale.

We even joined a Facebook group of the few people who have boats in the same boatyard we do, who are “in the same boat,” so to speak. The only one we know of who may be successful in getting his boat out of Tonga hired a skipper who is already in Tonga to sail his boat the 400 miles to Fiji. Fiji has intermittently allowed sailboats and their owners to enter the country during the Covid epidemic, as long as Fiji has no active cases at the time. But even if we could find someone in Tonga to sail our boat to Fiji for us, Rick has several maintenance projects he wants to accomplish personally before we splash, so hiring someone else won’t work. Besides, Fiji went back into lockdown in May 2021, even to boaters, so I am not sure if our friend with the skipper in Tonga was able to enter Fiji or not. And no other South Pacific country will allow foreign boats in either, not New Zealand nor Australia nor anywhere downstream of Tonga. Even if we could get into Tonga, there is no where we could go except to literally sail nonstop around the world, because the only country that would take us in is the USA, and only because we are citizens here.

So, we have been keeping busy in whatever way we can until such time as we can return to Tonga, including many moments in our hot tub imagining what it might be like to do an RV trip around the US once we got back to our boat in Tonga, sailed it to Australia, and sold it. Cindy was feeling estranged from her family in the Midwest, and thought a great way to see them would be in an RV. Rick’s motivation was to see our kids in the Pacific Northwest, of course, but also to visit his sister in New Hampshire, and to see the Florida Keys. Before Covid, we even visited several RV lots and after much research, decided on which fifth wheel we would buy when the time was right. Logically, Rick didn’t think it was wise to invest in an RV and a truck to pull it while we still owned a sailboat, just because each requires money and time to maintain, and it would be a challenge to afford either the money or the time on both simultaneously. So we decided that this RV plan would have to wait until after Covid and after we could sell Cool Change in Australia.

But then 2021 rolled around, developed nations began getting vaccinated, and still, the Tongan borders were closed to us. It became pretty obvious that Tonga was not going to open its borders soon enough for us to get back to our boat, make the necessary improvements, and sail away before the next cyclone season was upon us in November, 2021. I was a little sad that we couldn’t move forward with our USA travel plans, just because I guess I am feeling a sense of urgency about not getting any younger and wanting to do things before the time comes that I can’t … but I agreed with Rick about not wanting to take on too much financial burden at once. But then, our friend Wig and Laura had heard about our future RV plans, and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse: a 29 foot travel trailer, that looked in great condition. Once we had it, we couldn’t just let it sit there, so we bought a truck to pull it, and in two days we start a six month travel adventure around the USA! More on that in the next post …