Day 4,680 - St Thomas, US Virgin Islands 14:17 hrs - March 23, 2020 Storm Season

No matter where you are, land or sea, the restrictions relating to COVID-19 are changing almost daily, and measures that would have seemed unimaginable a few days ago, reserved for the pages of a post-apocalyptic novel, are now a sobering reality for many.

Last week we had prepared Dream Time to sail north for Turks and Caicos, then the Bahamas before returning to Florida to close our 13-year world voyage. But changing conditions made it clear that moving anywhere, even on a cruising yacht, would be a mistake. The majority of islands and countries within the Caribbean have closed their borders leaving some mariners literally stranded at sea and wondering which way to sail.

We have friends crossing the South Pacific now, on the way to the Galapagos Islands, but as of March 14th, after sailing a thousand miles from Panama and spending over a week at sea, the Enchanted Isles can only be viewed from your deck, just long enough to collect some meager provisions before being waved on by Ecuadorian officials, and countries over 3,000 miles west - the Cook Islands, Niue, Tonga, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Australia - are all closed.

We're lucky to be on a well equipped and well provisioned boat, it is perhaps one the safest places to weather this pandemic. And the fact that we anchored, by chance, at Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands just a week before the virus exploded, makes us luckier still. The island has a population of just 51,000 people, stores remain open and fully stocked, cargo ships arrive daily to unload supplies, and locals are making preparations in the same calm, orderly and practical manner usually reserved for an approaching hurricane, to which they are well practiced. The Virgin island's Governor, Albert Bryan Jr., just announced additional closures, comparing the coronavirus to an "invisible hurricane".

Storm season has begun early this year.

Day 4,670 - St Thomas, US Virgin Islands 18:45 hrs - March 13, 2020 Quarantine

Yesterday we witnessed a cruise ship being denied access to the US Virgin Islands. One minute Grandeur of the Sea was making its slow pirouette into a tight berth alongside Crown Bay Marina on Saint Thomas, with the usual compliment of passengers lining the decks in anticipation of their arrival, the next minute it was steaming back out to sea. It seems one crew member onboard had travelled to Japan within the last fourteen days, and even though they were not showing any symptoms of COVID-19, the US Coast Guard denied them entry to "keep the public safe". The cruise ship was also denied access into Antigua before arriving in the US Virgin Islands, and as its final destination is the port Maryland, which is also closed, who knows exactly where it's steaming to now.

Locals we've spoken to here on Saint Thomas are growing increasingly concerned. Not necessarily about the coronavirus itself and possible contagion, most here have put that concern into perspective, but more about the domino effects of precautionary measures and how they will almost certainly have a significant economic impact on the island. Cruise ships will no longer be allowed to enter Saint Thomas for the next month, and as there can be up to five, sometimes eight ships arriving in a single day this time of year, unloading up to 10,000 tourists, well, that's a staggering loss of business. One local we spoke to today in a Pueblo supermarket was also concerned about the potential disruption of cargo deliveries to the island, and surrounded by long lines of locals wearing long expressions, many seemed to share her worry. A Walgreens we visited earlier in the day had signs stating customers were limited to just two toilet rolls each. The shelves were already empty.

Pueblo supermarket was exceptionally busy, edging on frantic, where many customers pushed trolleys loaded with bottles of bleach, water, and paper towels. We asked one local if it was usually so crowded on a Friday afternoon, she shook her head and said it felt like pre-hurricane preparations - and folks were getting ready for the worst.

We're very fortunate on Dream Time. Our cupboards are fully stocked. We can make our own water, and power, and we have a freedom and flexibility of movement (for now at least) that we are most grateful for. In a week we will be sailing north to Turks and Caicos, then into the Bahamas where we plan on spending a month or more exploring some of the more remote and uninhabited islands in the southern chain. We know how lucky we are.

We found a tiny gecko inside the boat last night. We're not entirely sure how he managed to sneak onboard, but perhaps he wanted to join us. After chasing him around the cabin we managed to finally gather him up, and this morning decanted him from a pot (where he was quarantined for the night) into a Ziploc bag (with air holes) so we could ferry him back to shore in the dinghy. We named him Thomas, found him a nice garden where, with an impressive back flip, he sprung out of the bag and stuck to a leaf.