It is starting to become suspicious

Tomorrow will mark the fourth week of the lock down and officially it has been extended until the 26th of April. Unofficially we are hearing that it will go until the 11th of May. Italian sources reported yesterday that the Spanish might be closing the borders to all incoming foreigners through the summer. Of course that would shut down a tourism industry that is already going to be devastated. The effects of such measures would be incalculable on the lifestyle in and around Marbella. It brings me to wonder how we will manage to return home in late June. Tuesday I will contact our Foreign Office and seek guidance on what we can do to return. Ideally we would return end of June, as foreseen, since for the moment we are better off here in this big house than in much smaller quarters at home. However, if the world turns to hell then Switzerland is probably the second safest place to be in the world, after New Zealand. I suppose Norway and Finland would also be very safe countries. There are a few with social systems and civilised people that would be safe for weathering the situation to come, if it becomes bad.

Dreaming of Il Barbone del Mare

The quarantine continues and it is becoming quite dull. If all goes according to plan, we have another 11 days or so inside. Most likely it will be extended. Dreams of sailboats are interrupting my work and CFA preparation and the tracks on my phone are my old sailing books that I put away years ago. When this is all over and life has returned to some level of normalcy, I will buy a small boat. The one that has caught my eye is the Albin Vega 27. It is a pocket blue water cruiser and I have known about it for some time. https://sailboatdata.com/sailboat/vega-27-albin

Dreams of blue water sailing vanished completely after a Sardinia - Mallorca cruise  against a Mistral in 2017 that had me laid out flat in the cabin and incapable of helping my very tough and battle-hardened sailing mates. Blue water sailing was lost to me on that cruise, but coastal cruising still remained an idea. For a few years we had a boat in Liguria and cruised the coast, always staying within sight of land and having a lot of fun visiting towns, swimming from the boat and just enjoying the life in and around the boat and the marina. 

This lifestyle is again a dream and a goal. A search turned up a number of these boats for sale. A few are in the Netherlands, one in Liguria and one in Greece. If I buy one in the Netherlands, I could imagine toying around with it up there for a few weeks and then dropping the mast and motoring through the canals of Belgium and France for a summer. Arriving in the Med I could leave it in a marina for the winter and then bring it to Spain the following year. Alternatively, I could motorbike down to Kavala from Romania this summer and check out the one available there. The biggest coastal cruising dream is to go from Spain to Greece over a summer. If I buy a boat in Greece, then conceivably I could do the reverse journey - spend a summer or two tooling around Greece and then sail the boat back to Spain over the course of a summer. 

All dreams, but good dreams and ones that keep me going during these odd times.