Heading Home for Real?

Milly is slumbering while we head to her home port.  For the two weeks she has been on the hard, we have been working in the sweltering heat to prepare her for hibernation.  A list of well over 100 items have been checked off with a great deal of sweat.  She is ready!

We are booked on a flight leaving today, direct from Grenada to Toronto.   After two canceled flights, on July 6 and August 7, we are very excited to take off but at the same time sad to leave Grenada, a safe and welcoming host country and where we have made many dear friends.

Our work has been relieved with several hikes lead by Peter to mountain peaks, waterfalls or sandy beaches with groups of spunky friends who didn't fret with a couple of wrong turns or lost trails in the overgrown tropical rainforest.

Grenada is a stunningly beautiful island with thick, lush growth.  We walked through giant bamboo groves, down rushing streams, under enormous mango trees.  Bananas, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, breadfruit, citrus of all types, among many, many others were everywhere.  The natural world is glorious here.

We have spent the month with the pessimistic attitude that the flight would not actually take place.  We didn't want to get our hopes up and be disappointed at the last minute as we had been for the July 6 flight.  However, there were signs that our hope would not be dashed.  Late in July, the Grenada national newspaper posted a press release from the government stating that the August 10 Air Canada flight would be the first international commercial flight allowed since borders shut down in March.  We took this as a positive sign, although a press release had also said the airport would open to commercial flights on July 1st - a promise broken only a couple of days before.  All this week we have opened our emails with some dread that we would find the flight cancelled. Each time we saw mail from Air Canada, of which there were several, our/my eyes widened and stomach flipped.  Instead, Air Canada has sent directions and tips of how to manage our safety from infection on the flight.  Although disconcerting, we saw the messages as a positive trend.

A trail had been a little neglected.  An impassable bridge meant fording a stream on foot.  Other trails did not even attempt the bridges.  Often the trail was the stream.

Today, our day of departure, we woke up to two messages from Air Canada with a subject saying there were changes to our itinerary - the same subject that changed our August 7 flight to August 10!  Oh, no!  I could hardly believe it.  Opening the first, it announced that instead of leaving Grenada at 1500 today, the flight would leave at 1100.  The second changed the time back to 1500.  Both emails were sent at exactly the same time.   Repeated looks at departure, arrival times at both airports and a call to the Grenada airport reassured us that 1500 was correct.  We watched virtually as the plane took off from Toronto.  As a dear friend said, our plane couldn't leave before it even gets here.

An especially keen group at the top of Mt QuaQua before heading down to Concord Falls, a trail rated "extremely difficult".  Ropes, mud, lost paths, mosquitoes, slippery rocks were challenges that did not stump any of these hikers.

So we are now sitting in our lovely room, waiting.  We will head to the airport in a couple of hours.  Hard to believe!  The plane is fully booked.  I'm sure there will be cheering as we take off.  And maybe even a few tears - leaving friends and our boat homes behind for who knows how long.

Although we plan to return to Milly at the end of October, the uncertainty of being able to do so is huge!  All who are leaving are doing so with trepidation - when will a return be possible, what kind of quarantine will be mandated, where will that quarantine be served, what countries will be open to sail to with/without quarantine?  Like others, our future plans are indeterminable.

But our short term future is almost certain now.  We will spend a few happy months with family and friends while living at the cottage and celebrating Emily and Gid's wedding.  We are very excited!!