I don’t tend to write blog entries in the style of “we’re here and we’re doing this”. I prefer to lean more towards general themes and topics of our cruising and reflect on these, drawing upon our years of sailing and countries that we’ve experienced.

But now I feel compelled to get much more immediate and specific. This is us, now.

For weeks we were watching it all unfold, not really knowing or understanding what it truly meant. The situation escalated so quickly from a problem far away, to an issue affecting some friends in Italy, then confining our aunts, uncles and parents to their homes in the UK to a full scale global crisis.

When you live on a boat and enjoy the freedom of not always being plugged in to the world’s noise it’s an eerie unreality to dawn upon you when far away comes knocking and you cannot ignore it.

Understandably our plans have changed. We have been cruising in the Komodo islands and relating to the town of Labuan Bajo, Flores, for several months while I work on “South Pacific Anchorages” (see here if this is news to you). The town is built on dive tourism, with most of the outfits being run by Europeans. It’s quite a pro western area and we know quite a few people here now, both locals and expats. We have almost become one of the local boats. Everybody knows the kids about town and around the anchorage as they have been smiling and waving at everyone for the last two months.

We had planned to fly to Australia at the end of next month when our visas ran out. We were looking forward to seeing old friends, getting various computer bits mended and of course re-starting our visas for the next leg of our journey. That dot dot dot for 2020 on our route page would have seen us cruising Bali in June and starting to head up to the Lingga and Riau islands in July and August, reaching Batam, crossing the Singapore strait and then arriving in Malaysia to explore Pangkor, Penang and Langkawi on the west coast and then onto Thailand.

And although the truth about the scale of what was happening worldwide was beginning to creep in a few weeks ago it wasn’t until they finally confirmed that our flights to Australia via Malaysia (who were fairly ahead of other SE Asian countries in closing their borders and instigating the MCO – Movement Control Order) were cancelled that we had to regroup, rethink and decide what we could and should do about it.

Because we liveaboards are in a rather unusual situation. When the FCO advises you to go ‘home’ what would that mean for us? Struggling to get the boat to somewhere in Indonesia to leave it longterm, grab a flight to Bali or Jakarta (the most severely impacted by the virus) and wait, sleeping and eating at the airport to get a long, shared cough and splutter flight back to London or elsewhere in the UK and go where? Our properties are rented, our families our self-isolating, I don’t think anyone would welcome 5 houseguests indefinitely so we’d be cooped up in some form of temporary accommodation, waiting, watching.

You see the thing is we are ‘home’. Wherever we are we take ‘home’ with us, our things, our books, toys, music, games, they’re all here.

But it is not lost on us how ill-prepared Indonesia is for these circumstances. It’s borders remain open when air and sea ports in every neighbouring country have been closed for some time. There is still inter-island travel allowed and the upcoming pressures of “mudik”, the exodus of people back to their home towns for “Idul Fitri” in the muslim population as well as the mass gatherings in relation to “Semana Santa” amongst the catholic population are reason enough to anticipate a huge spike in cases nationwide. The government is proposing a lockdown in Jakarta, the capital in Java, and their is talk of banning travel but neither plan has yet been implemented and we need more than words when there are still so many not taking the WHO’s advice.

So what does this mean for us? It means we stay. For now we are happy and comfortable with our plan. The town is well stocked for a tourist season that was on the brink of starting but will now not happen. Each time James goes to town for supplies he is made to wash his hands before entering the supermarket, and before using the ATM, and before visiting the Immigration office. Some people are wearing gloves before handling goods. Many cafes and restaurants are offering delivery or take away, and some groceries are available this way too. We have a decent amount of food stored on board but no freezer and no water maker so trips for supplies are necessary. I haven’t been to town since the 1st of March, but that started off as just being a coincidence of our lifestyle on board. And we have no plans to take the kids ashore. I have an eighteen month old who would quite happily lie down on the floor and lick it so no, that’s not happening.

Contradictory from so many people worldwide I have taken a break from working from home on the book in order to spend more time as a family adjusting to the changes we are faced with and simply enjoying their company. Our everyday life looks much the same though, as we were already both stay at home parents, living with a certain amount of isolation: we still spend hours making creatures from lego or plusplus; we paint, we draw and collage; we play with letter and number tiles; we build dens and make models; we read books in laps, watch family movies, marvel at Attenborough nature programs and sing our lungs out to Manu Chao. We get excited when it rains and harvest the fresh water. We swim, kayak and play with the sea however we can and visit empty beaches but we haven’t moved the yacht itself for a while in order to settle and calm ourselves in an uncontrollable situation. In truth it’s all pretty much what we always have been doing, aside from family visits to town.

As a parent I am grateful that our kids have long cultivated an amazing ability to concentrate on their play and have never suffered from going stir-crazy. Whether on the boat or living through one of our building-site periods on our London trips they are incredibly happy to be indoor cats for a while and this current phase doesn’t strike them as unusual. We of course have explained to them about corona, talked about the risks and problems and the choices that we’re facing as a family.

We are in regular touch with the British Embassy in Jakarta, who I’m on a first name basis with, and who have been tirelessly co-ordinating getting all our fellow non-boating Brits home. They ask how we’re doing healthwise and how our supplies are and have connected us with other local British folks who have settled here.

And, for now, we’re pretty happy with the choice, this place and our situation under the very strange circumstances while the world as we thought of it seems to be shifting and shaking beneath our feet.

So treading water and seeing how we go is the current plan.