The next morning, our other truly great taxi driver, Alex, met us at the railway station a few hours South of Nuwara Eliya. He loaded us into his car, and we reversed our course back to Trincomalee. There, we spent our last week enjoying the company of all our taxi driver crew.

We had tea and cake at our first taxi driver’s house; met his children, his wife, and both his parents in law. His father makes the most incredible samosas. And his wife served us coffee spiced with coriander powder and ginger, topped with milk. It’s an unusual flavor, but one that I have come to absolutely love here in Sri Lanka. Per the usual, served in a beautiful china cup.

We picked up my custom designed, custom sewed tunic to wear under my sari from another taxi driver's wife, and we let him drive us all around town to pick out the proper electric tea kettle.

Alex introduced us to a local restauranteur who supplied us with several meals of cuttlefish and plenty more milk tea. Then, we said goodbye to Alex, Sutha, Sutha’s sweet little girl, and Alex and Sutha’s mother who loves WWF Wrestling with every inch of her soul. Sutha cooked us a Sago Palm Pudding as a going away treat, then she sent Alex on an after dark odyssey to make sure we left town with all the ingredients to make our own Sago Palm Pudding aboard Sonrisa once we realized we missed this delicacy a few miles westward.

While on the Sago Palm Supply Odyssey, Alex made sure to supply us with a going away Ginger Spice Cake “freeze this and you can eat it every night for dessert on your passage!" Then, he treated us to ice cream sundays.

(And this is why I need to go on a Covid-Quarantine Diet.)

It happens every single time. We make these beautiful friends whose hearts are 100 miles wide. Then, we must leave. We wave goodbye to Sutha and hold up our bag of sago to prove to her Alex completed his mission. We say goodbye to Alex and promise I will send him photographs when I wear the sari to the first grand event in the US I can find occasion to use it. Then, Grin putters us to the center of the anchorage and out to Sonrisa. We fold him up, lash him down, and prepare ourselves to head out to sea.

That was March 6, 2020.

Even the day we left, the pandemic was building from a smoldering ember to a full blown fire. We left with only days time to our benefit. Had we waited just a bit longer, we would have been hemmed into place by Covid and seasonal sailing considerations to sit and wait in Sri Lanka for the remainder of 2020.

With luck, though, we clanged Sonrisa’s ship's bell to signal our departure and sailed out of the anchorage as a bike race began 100 bikes thick on the main road of Trincomalee. We slipped out of the port and into open ocean with light winds on our beam and friendly seas rocking Sornisa as we ran the coast of Sri Lanka Southward. Steel Sapphire left just behind us, pausing to motor in circles and recalibrate their autopilot. Andrew and I nestle in our beanbags and nibble at Darhun's father-in-law’s delicious samosas, another home away from home in our wake.

We sail this course just offshore of Sri Lanka for almost thirty six hours. The wind is great, the waves are tolerable, and dolphins came to visit and jump along side Sonrisa. The second evening at sea, I shower from a bucket while sitting on the side deck, letting Sonrisa’s bubbles tickle my toes while the afternoon sun and apparent wind dry and warm my skin. Even Kitty came out to sail with us.

“This was a perfect sailing day!” I say to Andrew as I settled back into my beanbag clean, happy, and full of ginger spice cake. “I bet my night watch will be dry, clear, and well lit with a full moon!”

But, just before bed, the wind dies back to nothing. Sonrisa's engine rumbles inside her hull and we pass the Southmost point of Sri Lanka in the evening twilight. Open ocean swallows us whole with all the churning and tossing you might expect from being digested by a monster. At midnight, we get a radio call that Steel Sapphire has been caught in a fishing net; I am miserable, too, while making involuntary “offerings” to Neptune over the side rail.

“How are things aboard Sonrisa?” Pete asks.

“No wind, but a washing machine worth of adverse current from all directions.” Andrew reports. Steel Sapphire works to free themselves from their tangle then sails further South than we did before tracking West to avoid the washing machine treatment in the currents.

By the next morning, the sea had flattened to a dead calm. The slightest breath of wind occasionally made cats paws across a surface so smooth we’d be suspicious it had frozen into ice if sweat wasn’t pouring away from our bodies at a rate rivaling nigara falls. I was already dehydrated and weak after communing with Neptune the night before, so my morning watch involved my body melting into a lump of flesh in my beanbag, my eyeballs floating to the top of the puddle to peek out at all the nothing that surrounded us.

When Andrew roused from his morning nap, we set the spinnaker sail - more for the shade it offered than any sailing capabilities. We relaxed as it tugged us forward momentarily until we would outrun the wind and the sail would collapse to hang from the top of our mast. Sonrisa ghosted silently through the water, cutting the surface tension with her graceful bow and leaving no wake behind.

“Hmmm.....” Andrew says toward mid-day, looking up at our spinnaker currently imitating a limp plastic bag.

“What?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t dilly-dally out here, after all,” he says. “They changed the game on us sailing into Sri Lanka, and it’s only gotten worse.”

I nod, in full agreement. Andrew reaches down, clicks the engine ignition and I head to the bow to douse the sail. The last thing we need is to be locked out, left to float around at sea. We use the motor for the remaining three days of flat calm, creating a temporary rift in our relationship with Katherine Hepburn who detests the motor with every fiber of her fur coat.

I receive a sailmail update from my Dad listing all of the Covid related problems beginning to spread their way through the United States. “Tom Hanks has been diagnosed with Covid19!” My Dad says. Andrew and I look at each other with grim expressions. We knew with Italy already in a full lockdown, Iran struggling, and of course China in its own lockdown, it didn’t seem implausible that the United States and any other nation suddenly afraid of Covid possibilities might close their borders. Andrew pushes the lever on the throttle a notch higher, and Sonrisa roars forward from her comfortable fuel-efficient pace at 1700 RPMs and 4.5 knots of boat speed to cruising speed at 2300 RPMs and almost 7.0 knots of boat speed. We smell burnt carbon billowing in clouds from Sonrisa’s hot exhuast.

We were all relieved to see the low lying atoll of Uligan roll over the horizon early the morning of our sixth day at sea. We slipped through the pass to find two other boats already at anchor, one being our good friends Mark and Susan aboard Erie Spirit. Mark radios to guide us around coral baumies only vaguely marked on the charts until we find a sand patch to toss our anchor

We whirl into a flury of activity, cleaning Sonrisa from passage mode to “presentable to immigration officers” mode. We contact our agent, and he confirms quarantine, immigration and port officers would be out to visit shortly. We hold our breath.

A few hours later, Steel Sapphire follows us into port trailed by another boat, and another. "Do you know any other boats at sea right now trying to enter the Maldives?” our agent asks us. My stomach sinks at the implications of why he would be asking who is out to sea. The sailors in port communicate among ourselves over the radio, attempting to tally the other cruising friends we know are likely in transit on their way to the Maldives. We knew of at least five.

“Thanks,” our agent responds with nothing more.

We hear word that cruising sailors are getting turned away from destinations in the red sea. To this point, it had only been large cruise ships forced to sail from port to port to port trying to find a destination that would take them. Now, it seems to apply to us as well.

“What if they don't let us in?” I ask Andrew.

“They’ll let us in.”

“What if they don’t?”

Andrew has no answer for this question.

We breathed a sigh of relief around noon when we watched the port authorities’ boat travel over to the first catamaran who anchored here this morning. They seem to be working their way through the check in paperwork, and presumably they would do the circuit around all boats in the anchorage next.

But, they didn’t.

They climb back aboard their boat and zip away, back to land. Over the VHF, one boat radios the catamaran to get the full scoop. “Are you all checked in?” We hold our breath and listen for positive news.

“No, they started, but they had to leave. They were called to an emergency meeting.”

A collective mood of disappointment swept across the anchorage VHF channel, but no one said anything. It’s an open channel, everything we say can be heard and monitored by anyone who turns to the same frequency.

We wait.

And wait.

And wait with no news.

Darkness falls. Finally around 8:00 p.m., the port authorities return to their little boat and start making a circuit to check everyone in. They don't explain what the emergency meeting was about, what might be happening, or any other news. But, they do not come aboard, they wear protective gear to avoid contamination, they take our temperatures, check us in, and then give us a gift of ice cream to welcome us to the Maldives.

“That was so nice!” I tell Andrew. I’m easy to bribe with ice cream, and a ninety-day tourist visa stamp never looked so good in my passport.

Over the course of two more days, more sailors arrive in the anchorage. Our agent asks us all, “how many more sailors do you know are in transit to the Maldives?” The problem is, for every one who arrives, we learn of another and another leaving port elsewhere to start their journey. Also, there must be more we don't know about. We tell the agent there are still several sailors in transit that we know of, and we are certain there must be even more than that.

“They are talking of closing the border,” he says to us. “You need to tell your friends to hurry.”

The anchorage sailors contact everyone they can any, way they can to say “no dawdling around, get here as fast as possible.” I’m not sure anyone out sailing believed the whole world’s borders might lock down and lock them out. I certainly wouldn’t have believed it until we lived through this experience.

“They are closing the borders at midnight tonight,” our agent tells us.

“HURRY!!!” Everyone tells their at-sea friends.

That night around ten p.m. several more boats enter the anchorage, in the dark, feeling their way blindly around baumies in a fashion none of us would ever voluntarily do in normal times. Usually, we would wait outside port for morning light, but the ramifications of that delay were too unpredictable. Andrew and I jump into Grin to meet one of the boats part way and guide them to a safe spot we know they can get to in the dark to set their anchor.

On board Sonrisa again, I pick up my phone to scroll through more Facebook and I see another sailor we are in touch with but don’t really know well leave Sri Lanka to try to sail to the Maldives. “Hi guys, I know you don’t know me well, but I wanted to reach out and let you know the Maldivians are saying they are closing their borders tonight at midnight. You might want to turn back to Trincomalee if you can, wait a week or so to see how this all shakes out.”

“They told us they would let us out, but we could not come back in if we left.” They responded, referring to Sri Lanka’s immigration officers.

“Really. Wow, okay. Well, so where are you now?”

“Probably two or three hours out of Trincomalee.”

Turn back? Go forward? I had no idea what I would do in this situation, I wished them luck and safety. As it turned out, they were not allowed to enter the Maldives and they sailed two additional weeks to Mayotte as French citizens instead.

Over the course of the next two weeks, several boats passed by the mouth of Uligan’s anchorage, only to be told they could not enter. One boat arrived, floated outside the mouth of the anchorage for over 48 hours, gently but firmly repeating “I cannot leave, is no where else for me to go.” Eventually, they didn’t know what else to do with them so they allowed them to anchor inside the harbor far away from all the other boats. We all marveled at how calm this couple stayed. “There is no way I would have stayed that calm,” Captain Andrew, the Zen Buddha of Boat Maintenance, declared as he listened to the drama unfold over the VHF radio. After that, the Maldivian Coast Guard was posted in our anchorage.

“I’m sure this is temporary,” we said, “I’m sure the world will figure out what to do before our visa runs out here.”