2022-06-02 St. Lucia to Norfolk

Early Hours

I’d had the medium-to-hot curry the night before and that kept me up for part of the night. I got up before 06:00 and made my first of 3 small morning cups of coffee. I started off with e-mail and internet work, then spent time getting the dodger down and stowed away. I’d fired up the air conditioning the afternoon before as I had to close the hatches during the rain; and without the bimini and dodger and other protection the rain just pours in when the hatches are open. The A/C ran all night and I planned on running it until just before I left the boat.

The bag was packed, the backpack contents checked and sorted out. I cleaned up the galley and closed some more through-hulls. Then the big electrical breakers for the winches and anchor were unset and finally all of the other breakers were opened – except for the 2 bilge pumps which would remain on for the duration. Then the A/C was shut down and the power cable removed and stowed belowdecks.

Finally, I took a quick shower ashore and then proceeded to don jeans, a polo shirt and my boots and immediately started sweating in the morning heat.

Airport Trip

The walk with backpack and leather bag to the taxi stand was only a couple of hundred feet, but those jeans felt like they had heating circuits turned on. My driver, Eddie, told me that there was some serious construction going on and that he would avoid some of the traffic by taking back roads. We detoured around Castries but the roads we took were windy, narrow and steep. But all seemed to go well until we hit the construction site on the (only) road to the airport and were stuck there, unmoving, for a good half hour. Eddie closed the windows and turned on the A/C while we waited. Finally traffic started moving again and we’d only been just around the corner from the construction work. As is so often the case, there were a large number of people with hi-visibility vests just standing around and as we passed there was absolutely no evidence of work taking place or signs of what work had caused the road to be closed. Oh well, I had checked in online the night before so wasn’t too worried about the delay.

Hewanorra Airport

Eddie dropped me off and I paid the $250XCD fee and went inside. I was surprised to see only 2 people ahead of me in the American Airlines queue. Despite having submitted all of my paperwork online I had to repeat everything and also fill in yet another form which I’d already done online as well. This only took a couple of minutes during the check-in process but by the time I’d finished the queue behind me had over 50 people waiting! Being at the front also meant almost no wait at immigration and at the security checkpoint. I hope that immigration in the USA will go as quickly, but I’m not overly optimistic as I’ve read that Miami is amongst the worst airports in the USA for C&I.  And I’m in the 2nd to last row on the flight and as the other flight departing just 2 hours later has been cancelled, I’m fairly certain that the flight is going to be full.

Miami

The flight was, as expected, packed to the last seat. And almost everyone had a carry-on that was bigger than my checked bag, and of course they all put them in the overhead compartments anywhere, including in the space for my little backpack! We had a bit of a delay taking off, but managed to make up the time and arrived in Miami on time. But then we had to wait 10-15 minutes for our gate to open up. Then came an incredibly long walk to the sky train and another long walk to the immigration checkpoint. I had a bit of a delay as one of the passengers had fallen and hurt his knee and I had to find an actual human employee to request a wheelchair for him. The first person I spoke wasn’t interested in doing anything at all, just waved me on and I said “This is a joke, someone is hurt!”. So instead of using the VHF to call for assistance, the lady wanted my name!  Things looked up a bit at passport control, the booth for foreigners were all staffed and I barely broke step going through.

The luggage took a while to reach the carousel and when I got my bag I walked past the customs officers and their friendly dogs and got in line to have my bag continue it’s journey. That wasn’t so bad but then I saw that the line for the “connecting flights” was long. I had to walk a couple of hundred feet to reach the end of that line! After 40 minutes of slowly progressing along that line and with the gate in sight, they shut it down and took everyone OUTSIDE of security and into another line. Which took another 1.5 hours to reach the front of. Needless to say, that didn’t put me into my happy place. And once through that security check, I saw that my flight was delayed an hour, meaning I’ll be arriving in Norfolk at 01:00 in the morning!

Norfolk

The flight took off an hour late, but managed to catch up some time en-route. It was around 12:30 when a number of tired and dispirited passengers made it, after a lengthy walk, to the baggage claim carousel. And then nothing happened. For a length period. Finally, an employee came by and said that because there was lightning around the ground crew could not work and not unload the baggage for an unspecified period of time and then he quickly left. I went outside to look at the skies and there was one CuNim about 10 miles downwind of the airport and otherwise no rain or clouds. An hour later the conveyor system started buzzing and our baggage was disgorged. A short taxi ride later I was in the hotel and in my room and I got to sleep at about 2AM