Landlubber isn't a Welsh Word!

I was going to call this blog "Leaving lockdown and running away to sea, part 2". However, we are still at home in Wales, still in lockdown and our hopes of going back to sea are on hold. Celtic Star remains safe on a coral atoll in French Polynesia and we are looking forward to returning there sometime in the future, we just don't know when!

The main prompt for writing this blog is because due to world events, after 10 successful years we have ceased trading as Celtic Cruising and removed our website. We forgot that our travel blog was attached to that site and would stop being published! So, we have retitled our blog and this is my trial run for our new domain address at www.CelticStar.net

Back to blogging,,,the sudden lockdown in December came a few weeks after Joel (our pseudo son in law and house sitter ) had returned to N Ireland to visit his parents, due to lockdown, he remains over there! Meanwhile, our daughter Laura pursued her plans to move to Cardiff , not the best timing, but dreams and futures must still be sought! So we needed to get our home ready for a new house sitter to move in at the beginning of March. Hours and days and weeks were spent clearing out cupboards, drawers, shelve, rooms and the garage. An amazing amount of stuff has accumulated over the decade we have lived here and now because of lockdown we have bags of ex -belongings waiting to go to charity, to refugee centres and to N Ireland once life opens up again. Scott returned from Cardiff University, keeping us safe by testing prior to return! He was warmly greeted with safe hugs and kisses only to discover the following day that one of his housemates had tested positive! So he re-tested and self isolated in his bedroom! As I then developed nasty cold symptoms I also visited the local drive through Covid testing centre, luckily I was negative too! Christmas lights and decorations appeared earlier than usual throughout our house as a way of keeping cheerful and the naturally resourced Christmas tree just lasted in to the New Year before its needles all dropped off. I am definitely getting a non -drop tree next year because it took hours to get the needles out of the carpet, and the reason they are called needles is because they do draw blood! This was our first Christmas without our eldest child, Anna, who lives alone in Portsmouth, which also went into lockdown a week before Christmas, preventing her from travelling home. We were thankful for video calling, the postal service and the friends who kindly invited her to spend a socially distanced Christmas Day with them. A Christmas cake and other surprises were dispatched First Class as soon as we realised she would be alone for Christmas. The festive season was still a good reason for a celebration but on a smaller scale than usual. We were very thankful for our health and our comfortable house with stunning views and beautiful surroundings.

At the beginning of January we made sure we had completed all the jobs on the house and our travel plans were confirmed. Our bags were packed, mostly with spare parts for the boat and our personal belongings were stored away again. Richard' s birthday fell a week before our departure, so we celebrated with an early Burns' Night. Kilts, poetry, haggis and whisky blended with feminist speeches and some home grown music was played.

Two days later our plans started to unravel when the final flight in our complex travel itinerary (from Tahiti to Apataki )was cancelled. This connection had also caused us problems in October on our journey home, so we were fairly resigned about it. We changed the Covid PCR test date and re scheduled our 3 flights for the following week, cancelled our stop over hotel in Papeete and even worse the restaurant booking we had been so excited to make.

This took several hours and calls on the telephone to France, America and Tahiti. Well done Richard, because when I said "We" I really meant He rebooked everything!

Meanwhile, I had suffered a couple of weeks with minor irritating abdominal discomfort, which my doctor thankfully followed up with blood tests. I was very surprised when one of the results was abnormal. I was convinced it would be a false alarm, (nurses always make the worst patients) so Richard got back on the phone and postponed the PCR test and 3 flights for another 3 weeks to the middle of February, scheduled after my Ultrasound scan. But I was wrong and the scan showed an abdominal mass which resulted in an urgent referral to a hospital consultant. So Richard got back on the phone to cancel our PCR tests and indefinitely postpone our three flights. Thank you Richard!

For those of you that know our history there is a feeling of deja vu at this point, because in 2018, four months before we were originally meant to be setting sail on our World trip, Richard was diagnosed with bowel cancer and we postponed our trip for a year. What with Covid and now this, I wonder how long it will take us to complete our circumnavigation, which we are determined to do! We have many reasons to appreciate our NHS, apart from the fact it payed my wages for 35 years! And we are also grateful that we have now both received our first Covid vaccinations.

So that was that! We remain in lockdown in Wales, our travel plans are on hold and now the Pacific countries are locking down further. French Polynesia has closed its borders to incoming yachts again and island countries like Vanuatu and Tonga have been closed for over a year. Australia is still not open and the World Cruising Club have cancelled the World Rally this year! So, we have postponed re-joining the Rally until September 2022, in Darwin, Australia, when we hope to meet up with guys again for sailing and parties!

We continue to keep in touch with our sailing buddies who have now become widely dispersed throughout the world. A couple of boats made it to New Zealand, which is essentially closed unless you agree to spend $50,000 on boat repairs and maintenance! Two boats left French Polynesia heading west in July 2021 and are now crossing the South Atlantic from South Africa to Brazil, which is where we should be if the rally had continued. However, they have had to make some very long passages and miss Australia and several island groups in order to carry on. Other boats from our fleet are in Fiji, which is now in the cyclone season, so most people we know, have left their boats in cyclone pits and flown home to the US and UK. A few boats have been shipped back to home ports in the UK and Europe, and some boats remain in in French Polynesia, mostly in dock but one or two are still cruising.

For now, we are trying to regain our equilibrium after the abrupt wrench in our plans and we have started planning and executing various projects at home. Our house sitter has been postponed, we have unpacked our bags and we are settling back into proper landlubber mode. Firstly, we are re- stocking the food cupboards because we had run down all the usual stores of sauces and herbs and staples, even toiletries are in need of replenishment! Our lounge is currently a patchwork of sample paint colours under consideration for re-decoration and we are painting the inside of the garage to make a workshop area, where Richard and Laura are building a work bench. I am knitting a sweater on big needles, so hopefully it will be finished before the weather gets too warm! Spring is coming, and the garden is starting to bloom, so the addition of a mini green house in the back yard is being discussed. Over the last few months I have been trying to improve my French with on line learning but now I will revert to Welsh as it will probably be more useful!

We will find life very odd here without Celtic Star in Deganwy Marina, and I wonder how we will cope watching boats sailing past our window in the summer. Hopefully, we will be able to crew with friends to settle that itch. Finally, there is nothing we can do about life's strange twists and turns apart from stay cheerful and positive and "Carry on making plans".

To quote from Dylan Tomas, Llareggub!

Which is the name of the fictitious village in Under Milk Wood, most appreciated when read backwards.