Covid-19 has marooned people living on small boats worldwide. Now hundreds of anxious sailors are preparing to make dangerous voyages home across the Atlantic
With a 3,600-mile non-stop solo sail across the Atlantic ahead of him, Garry Crothers is a little anxious. But he has to get moving before the hurricane season. “I’m in a bad place here, I don’t have any choice,” he says.
Like many living aboard their sailing boats, he has been stranded at sea by Covid-19. The 64-year-old Irishman has been on Kind of Blue, his 43ft aluminium boat, for two months, hardly touching land. He’s anchored off Sint Maarten, in the Caribbean – a less pleasing prospect than it sounds. Hurricane season officially starts on 1 June and the island, as Crothers is acutely aware, is “bang in the middle of the hurricane belt” – hit hard by Dorian last year, and Irma in 2017. Neighbouring countries and islands that might afford protection are shut. Crothers’ only safe option is a solo sail home to Ireland.
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