April 09 – April 23, 2020; 2899 nm and 399 days after departure from La Rochelle

Our last weekend was one of the saddest in a very long time. Last Thursday we got the sorrowful news that Norbert’s mother was dying (that had nothing to do with corona) and only 24 hours later she passed away. It was a shock to us as we did not expected that to happen. She was ill for quite a while, but we thought she was on her way to recover.

Agitated as we were we immediately tried to find out if we or at least El Capitano could travel to Germany. After some hours of research the result was sobering. Indeed it seemed to be possible to find a flight to Germany but then we’d be stuck for two weeks in quarantine. Maybe we could have gotten an exception from the authorities, but the main issue was if we are allowed to come back to the Canaries. Norbert contacted the German as well as the Spanish embassy and it was soon clear if we left Spain there would be no possibility to reenter for quite a long time. As long as this stupid virus turns the world up side down, nobody can tell when it will be possible to travel again. That meant, staying here and not being able to support Norbert’s father or joining the funeral. (Our home is our boat, we have no back up living in Germany)
That was the next shock and it was only Saturday morning 😢. In Corona times even dying and mourning seems to be more difficult…
Norbert tries to support his father as much as he can over the phone but that is about all he can do due to f…ing corona, very heartbreaking.

Saturday, the Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez announced another two weeks of lockdown until May 11th. That was to be expected but there was also hope that the lockdown restrictions would be loosened. (Just as a reminder, we’re not allowed to do anything since March 15th but getting groceries and that of course only on our own. No sports, no walks, no cycling , no swimming, no nothing.) Far from it! The only relief would be for children up to 14 who’d be allowed to go outside, but only to accompany one of their parents to the supermarket. Ridiculous! So -maybe you can imagine- on Sunday after all the “good news” we felt for the first time in corona times downhearted and frustrated.

Fortunately there was a more fun time before this weekend and there will be nicer ones to come! Our youngest turned 25 on the 9th of April and her boyfriend had the sweet idea to edit a birthday video for her from all her friends and family sending birthday wishes videos. Of course we were happy to join. As good ideas always come on veeery short notice 😁 we did not have much time to think about a cool storyline. That made it easy, we just performed as singers and actors in the short video. It was a pleasant interruption where we had a lot of fun with the “making of “. You might think that would have been an easy task for me after my incredible great performance on my own birthday video. I can tell you it was not! My experience, with a little help of a glass of wine it was much easier…
Anyhow I couldn’t stop laughing while “acting” so it was on El Capitano to do most of the singing. That was probably better as his voice is definitely more talented than mine. It was great fun and we enjoyed doing it very much. But no, we won’t show the video.😉

The Easter bunny was on its way and we needed to prepare a few decorations for his arrival. A few napkins and some old paper bags later our Easter decoration was ready. I was also keen on colouring some eggs. The challenge was, I had only brown eggs and either onion skin or curcuma to colour them. I went for curcuma as I was hoping that the eggs might turn out a little yellowish or orangish but… see yourself.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Easter Sunday we craved for a Hefezopf (easter bread which is typical to eat in Germany) but somehow it took ages for the dough to rise (I make my own yeast water and with the wild yeast you never know how active and willing to rise it is) As we wanted desperately to have breakfast with the easter bread we had to wait a loooong time. Eventually we had our easter breakfast at 3 in the afternoon. OMG! We were starving and instead of finally enjoying the food we devoured it. Though it was still delicious. 😋

After Easter we found back to the normal corona – business as usual – time. Coffee, toilet walk, reading news, breakfast, sometimes toilet talk, platform talk, boat work… El Capitano fixed the monitor but couldn’t completely finish the work as we still can’t buy material. We need new plywood to rebuilt the lid including the monitor. I was looking after our new mesh fabric and sewed sunshades which we can attach to our bimini to be more protected from the sun. That was an easy work to do but I was missing some webbing to finish it.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Again I asked the sailor community and found a sailmaker who is a sailor and has his business around the corner. Lucky me! I sneaked off the marina to his working office. He welcomed me -with a lot of distance of course- at his shop and had the webbing I needed but also a lot of left over sunbrella fabric which he was happy to offer. Very satisfied for getting the material and very thankful for the nice distraction I sneaked back off to the boat. Ready to first finish the sunshade project and then start my new project, covers for our winches. Measuring, cutting and sewing took me two days and again I was proud of my achievement 💪. The covers are a bit more tricky to sew as they have an inside “skirt” to hold on to the winches.

• 

• 

• 

Yesterday I had an outside toilet talk with two nice ladies from the marina. We dared to meet at a bus stop just outside the marina. Very smart, ain’t it?! I mean, there is definitely a possibility that we all could be at the same bus stop just by chance waiting for a bus (though not really be allowed to take a bus, but who cares?) and all speak German, could’t it? So funny, every time a bus came we jumped of the bench and went behind the bus shelter as we did not really wanted to take the bus😉

We had fun, felt a bit stupid though but being in corona times you need to be creative. Heading back home we felt a bit to safe. We didn’t pay any attention to our surroundings and oops there it was, the police waiting for us.🤷‍♀️ Me being a little in front of the girls just walked by, paying no attention to them, pretending to be cool.😂 The other two ladies, they know very well Spanish, talked to the police and fortunately only got told off a little bit. The “Guardia civil” actually seemed to be quite nice and understanding but they had to say something… it’s their job of course.

• 

• 

• 

In the meantime El Capitano prepared a very delicious Bouillabaisse, what a spoilt sailor wife I am.😍 On top of that our French community on our platform, (the ones who it seems are only preparing outstanding meals and are eating all the time when we are passing their boats) offered us pieces of their “tarte au citron et gateau au fromage” for desert. OMG what a fantastic dinner. Days are definitely getting better again.😊

And just now we read in the news that there might be a loosening of the restrictions starting next Monday, like being allowed to do some sports or just to go for a walk. OMG that would be awesome! Our mood is already rising , yeahhhhh. Cross fingers.