Cruising During Covid

Our home province of British Columbia has just finished its strictest restrictions so far in the fight to get Covid-19 under control. In many ways it hasn’t affected us much. The rules don’t allow for restaurants to have inside dining. Bars are closed. Travel is limited to essential travel only and only within one’s health district. For the purpose of Covid-19, the province is divided into three large health districts so our area encompasses all of Vancouver Island and a large portion of the north coast. Basically, we have enough cruising area to keep us busy for years!

Recently, the province revised the restrictions to allow for recreational travel but still it must be within one’s health district. So how has this impacted us you might ask–actually, not much.

In preparing our boat and ourselves for long distance cruising we’ve made ourselves largely self-sufficient. We can make our own fresh water. Solar panels supply most of our electrical power. If we need more electricity we have a generator or can use the main engine.

Last week we topped up the diesel fuel tanks. The last time we topped them up was the first week of December–five months ago.

We do need groceries but so does everyone else. We can go a few weeks between trips to the grocery store so our contact with others is minimal.

From what I’ve written it would appear that the current Covid restrictions don’t impact us very much. This is partially true. On a boat we naturally self-isolate but the restrictions do impact us.

One impact is that we don’t go ashore as much as we normally would. Many of the small island communities around us are isolated and have limited medical facilities. They certainly don’t have hospitals or facilities to deal with Covid. If one of their residents were to get Covid they would have to leave the island and go to a larger population centre to receive medical treatment. Therefore, we limit our time ashore. We have both had our first dose of a Covid vaccine but we still don’t want to risk spreading the virus. (At the time of writing it’s not known if it’s possible to carry the virus if one’s been vaccinated.)

Thankfully there are many provincial marine parks that we can access. Most of them have good walking trails so we can get off the boat and stretch our legs every few days. We can do this with little risk to others.

The biggest impact of the restrictions is that we aren’t permitted to visit our kids. When we returned to Canada after living overseas we looked forward to seeing them more often. That hasn’t happened. They live in Vancouver which is out of our health district. Before the current restrictions were implemented, we got over to Vancouver for a quick visit. It was the first time we’d seen them in eight months.

Our original long-term plan when we left our jobs in China was to spend about a year getting the boat ready and then sail south to warmer waters. That timeline would have us leaving the west coast of Canada this September. We’ve decided to postpone our departure. We won’t leave this fall. We will wait until the world has had more time to get Covid under control. Many of the places we want to visit are currently closed to travellers with no timeline as to when they will re-open. We could take a chance and head south hoping that more places will open in six months or so but we have decided not to take that chance. We will stay in Canada for another year. It will give us a chance to do all the things we had looked forward to doing this past year but haven’t been able to do–things like skiing, re-acquainting ourselves with friends and family, and getting to spend time with our kids.

It’s disappointing yet at the same time we’re excited. We’re excited to do the things I mentioned above and we’re excited to explore some of the nooks and crannies along Canada’s west coast. It’s a huge area with huge potential for sailing.