2023-10-31_Stranded_in_the_Caribbean_for_2_years
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00:01:01.000 | My small family spent two years of our lives essentially stateless.
00:01:07.000 | Stranded at sea, 18,000 kilometers from home, floating on 40 feet of fiberglass.
00:01:15.000 | Freedom to transact literally became a matter of life or death.
00:01:22.000 | This is our story.
00:01:25.000 | Australia locked its citizens out from returning during the pandemic.
00:01:29.000 | My family, wife and three kids, three, five, and six months old, were sailing on a catamaran in the eastern Caribbean at the time.
00:01:39.000 | We ended up there for two years, waiting out the pandemic.
00:01:44.000 | When the pandemic hit, we essentially became stateless.
00:01:49.000 | For a time, all countries within sailing distance closed their borders to Australian flagged vessels.
00:01:56.000 | No flights or cruise ships.
00:01:59.000 | My son couldn't renew his passport, and we had to get him temporary refugee papers.
00:02:06.000 | Initially, we got locked down for 91 days on our boat in an overseas territory of France.
00:02:14.000 | The Gendarme Nautique, water police, prohibited us from leaving the boat.
00:02:19.000 | We technically weren't even allowed to swim off the boat at anchor.
00:02:24.000 | Early on, desperate to get the kids some exercise, we took the dinghy to an isolated beach.
00:02:30.000 | The Gendarme came with guns and megaphones to enforce our isolation.
00:02:36.000 | The next day, a mini aircraft carrier arrived and military control was implemented on the island.
00:02:44.000 | Hurricane season arrived while we were still in lockdown, ramping up the stress.
00:02:50.000 | We provisioned to head to sea if a hurricane approached.
00:02:54.000 | Stateless, the last resort plan was to drift at sea, waiting out the season.
00:03:01.000 | I studied the weather manically.
00:03:04.000 | Months passed. Hurricanes became imminent. The outlook dire.
00:03:10.000 | Then Grenada saved us.
00:03:12.000 | They let 1,200 stranded boats in despite their borders being completely shut.
00:03:19.000 | A tiny, poor country was saving us when my own affluent country was blocking its citizens.
00:03:26.000 | This hit home hard.
00:03:28.000 | We sailed three days nonstop to Grenada.
00:03:31.000 | Too late in the season, we faced terrible weather, experiencing multiple frontal systems, winds of 30 to 40 plus knots.
00:03:40.000 | And at one point, three tornadic water spouts closed in around us while the gooseneck bolt on the boom vibrated loose.
00:03:48.000 | Two more weeks of quarantine, then freedom after four months restricted to the boat.
00:03:56.000 | NOAA then issued a hurricane warning with a track map directly over us.
00:04:02.000 | We scrambled to prepare and tied to the mangroves.
00:04:05.000 | Thankfully, it fizzled out and passed just south of us.
00:04:10.000 | As time went by, we became forgotten citizens.
00:04:15.000 | Freedom to transact issues began to arise.
00:04:18.000 | We had been living in Canada for the three years prior on global expert visas.
00:04:24.000 | Canada had also locked us out.
00:04:27.000 | It remained open to citizens and permanent residents, but not to work visa holders.
00:04:33.000 | Our Canadian bank cards expired, and we needed to be physically in Canada to activate new ones.
00:04:41.000 | Subsequently, our online banking account was suspended for suspicious activity.
00:04:47.000 | Again, we were required to go into a branch to remedy, which was impossible.
00:04:53.000 | Our Australian bank access also became restricted.
00:04:58.000 | After roaming overseas for too long, our Australian phone SIMs expired,
00:05:03.000 | and we lost access to our two-factor authentication numbers needed for access to our bank accounts there.
00:05:09.000 | To obtain a new SIM, we needed to provide government-approved ID and activate from within Australia.
00:05:17.000 | Again, the familiar response was, "Come into the bank and we can sort this out."
00:05:22.000 | Loss of freedom of movement essentially led to a loss of freedom to transact.
00:05:29.000 | Fortunately, we had access to family who could help us out,
00:05:32.000 | and the bank agreed, after much pleading over the phone,
00:05:36.000 | to accept a phone number of a family member for two-factor authentication.
00:05:40.000 | But the lesson was clear.
00:05:42.000 | Without freedom to transact, you have very limited options to sustain life.
00:05:49.000 | The Australian government had placed a Level 4 travel ban on the entire world for its citizens,
00:05:56.000 | previously reserved only for war zones.
00:05:59.000 | This immediately rendered both our travel and health insurance policies void
00:06:05.000 | due to exemption clauses for travel to Level 4 areas.
00:06:10.000 | The Panama Canal then shut to vessels under 80 feet,
00:06:15.000 | and so began two often stressful years at sea, 18,000 kilometers from home,
00:06:23.000 | reliant on the benevolence of small foreign countries to provide the very shelter
00:06:28.000 | that our own country refused to render.
00:06:32.000 | In this crazy chapter of our lives, we faced numerous challenges,
00:06:36.000 | yet savored incredible family experiences.
00:06:40.000 | Cancelled by the stress, we entered a heightened state of existence,
00:06:45.000 | ultimately transforming it into the most extraordinary time of our lives.
00:06:50.000 | Navigating through immense technical and geopolitical intricacies,
00:06:55.000 | we journeyed using little more than wind across 15 countries and territories during the pandemic.
00:07:02.000 | With the absence of cruise ships and flights,
00:07:06.000 | the Caribbean's remote tranquility echoed the serenity of the 1950s.
00:07:11.000 | Sailing into endless sunsets, dolphins playfully surfed our bows awake
00:07:17.000 | as the stars emerged in the evening sky.
00:07:20.000 | We saw numerous volcanic islands materialize on the horizon
00:07:24.000 | and explored untouched jungles and secluded waterfalls.
00:07:29.000 | We spent time with the kids, wildlife spotting for monkeys, iguanas, bird colonies,
00:07:35.000 | exploring volcanic landscapes, relaxing in hot springs,
00:07:39.000 | swimming and diving over the reef with turtles and schools of fish,
00:07:44.000 | just enjoying the sea and each other as we watched the kids grow up.
00:07:49.000 | Endless hours at the beach, meeting other stranded families from all over the world
00:07:53.000 | with vastly different backgrounds but ultimately a shared story,
00:07:58.000 | a common experience to bond us together.
00:08:01.000 | We ran our own renewable power systems, solar and wind, into a lithium bank.
00:08:06.000 | We made our own water via a small desalination unit,
00:08:10.000 | caught our own fish, drank rum punch, and watched the green flash
00:08:14.000 | from more remote beaches than one could expect to see in tens of lifetimes.
00:08:20.000 | Not all rose is obviously.
00:08:22.000 | The flip side was the challenges of raising a baby girl and two boys,
00:08:26.000 | including doing homeschool in a confined space.
00:08:29.000 | Coming up to speed under duress as landlubbers with the realities of sailing,
00:08:33.000 | navigation, weather routing, and all boat systems.
00:08:36.000 | Constantly working on the seemingly infinite list of boat maintenance jobs.
00:08:41.000 | Endless time spent provisioning and looking for parts,
00:08:44.000 | fitting in the time to work remotely to keep us alive financially.
00:08:47.000 | Dragging anchor in midnight squalls, having other boats drag around you.
00:08:52.000 | Enduring sleep deprivation from anchor alarms and a breastfeeding infant,
00:08:56.000 | we somehow persevered on multi-day sails without access to additional crew,
00:09:01.000 | testing our limits.
00:09:02.000 | We then faced extended lockdowns and quarantines everywhere upon arrival.
00:09:07.000 | The mental angst of that initial 91 days of lockdown in the hurricane belt,
00:09:12.000 | hoping that borders would open somewhere for Australian flagged vessels
00:09:16.000 | before the hurricane season started, be with me for life.
00:09:20.000 | Certainly the hardest thing we have done as a family.
00:09:23.000 | The 18 months that followed was a sublimely beautiful,
00:09:27.000 | yet at times crushingly difficult.
00:09:30.000 | In hindsight, the most meaningful time in our lives.
00:09:34.000 | When we finally made it home to Australia after two years floating on 40 feet of fiberglass,
00:09:40.000 | it felt like an alternate reality.
00:09:42.000 | People at home stressing about the smallest of issues and arguing over trivial things.
00:09:48.000 | The Australia I left, a nation of prolific travelers,
00:09:52.000 | was now scared of foreigners in a way I had never thought possible in my life.
00:09:56.000 | Something had been lost in the population here.
00:09:59.000 | They had their own lockdown trauma.
00:10:03.000 | In a bizarre way, being stranded at sea liberated us from it.
00:10:06.000 | Forged by circumstance, intermeshed into the physical world around us,
00:10:11.000 | our preconceived boundaries of what was possible in life,
00:10:14.000 | physically and emotionally, had been removed.
00:10:18.000 | Yet in other ways, it led to a kind of PTSD reintegrating into society.
00:10:23.000 | Everyone took for granted simple freedoms like freedom of movement,
00:10:26.000 | freedom to always be able to return to your home country, and freedom to transact.
00:10:32.000 | We knew firsthand how fragile it all was.
00:10:35.000 | I held back releasing ocean work or even this story as I needed time to process the experience.
00:10:41.000 | After two years of being back on land, I created the Intrepid Ocean series
00:10:45.000 | to attempt to work through these thoughts and emotions.
00:10:48.000 | The experience highlighted the fragility of the global norms and governance systems we take for granted.
00:10:54.000 | Now, after three years back in Australia, we are heading back to our boat in the Caribbean to finish what we started.
00:11:00.000 | The kids are now four, eight, and ten.
00:11:02.000 | So, here we are again on the precipice, about to jump off,
00:11:05.000 | to find out who we truly are as individuals, as a family.
00:11:12.000 | The essay I have just read to you was a Twitter post by an account named Intrepid.
00:11:20.000 | The handle is @Intrepid_P.
00:11:24.000 | Intrepid also answered a couple of questions that were asked by listeners
00:11:29.000 | that I think are really useful and illuminating.
00:11:33.000 | Angie says, "I can't believe Australia locked you out. Was there a specific reason?
00:11:38.000 | My cousin had been in America for over 10 years and it took a while,
00:11:42.000 | but he flew back into Australia after maybe five months into the pandemic."
00:11:46.000 | Intrepid responds, "It's complex, but essentially, initially, in the first six to eight months,
00:11:52.000 | there were no flights out of where we were.
00:11:55.000 | The airport simply shut on the small island nations.
00:11:59.000 | By the time they relaxed and opened up, the quotas into Australia had been reduced
00:12:05.000 | again and were as low as $3,000 per week, with over 50,000 Australians registered with DFAT
00:12:12.000 | and probably four times not registered wanting to come home.
00:12:16.000 | This drove flight prices to astronomical levels, peaked at $80,000 per person from London.
00:12:24.000 | Not, obviously, an option for five of us to spend a quarter of a million flying home.
00:12:29.000 | The reality was Australia kept granting exemptions for critical business trips out of Australia
00:12:35.000 | and most of the $3,000 cap was taken by high-priced business travel,
00:12:40.000 | for whom paying $50,000 was not an issue.
00:12:43.000 | Start contrast to the New Zealand system, where they ran a lottery ticket system to come home
00:12:49.000 | rather than let the market decide who could pay to come home.
00:12:52.000 | We finally managed to book flights via American Airlines via Los Angeles after like 18 months,
00:12:59.000 | and even then, just before we flew, they halved the quota again after we booked.
00:13:04.000 | American Airlines, to meet this, then simply cancelled every second flight
00:13:08.000 | and rebooked people six down the track.
00:13:11.000 | We, by chance, survived this cull.
00:13:14.000 | The quota at those levels meant that each flight from LA to Sydney only had 32 passengers on it.
00:13:20.000 | This was not sustainable, and so six weeks later, Americans stopped flying completely Australia
00:13:25.000 | and just flew freight.
00:13:27.000 | On arrival home, after having all been vaccinated and having two PCR tests in a week of flying
00:13:32.000 | and one on arrival, we then had to pay $5,500 to quarantine for two weeks on arrival,
00:13:39.000 | same building as the athletes returning from Tokyo Olympics.
00:13:42.000 | For the $5,500, we got a small hotel room with two beds for five people.
00:13:48.000 | All up, it cost us close to $50,000 to get home, even after waiting 18 months since the initial lockdown.
00:13:58.000 | Another question that was asked.
00:14:02.000 | Wow, truly impressive story.
00:14:04.000 | Some questions.
00:14:05.000 | One, how did you access internet?
00:14:06.000 | Two, were you using crypto in the Caribbean as a currency since your bank cards were cut?
00:14:10.000 | And three, same boat for this new voyage?
00:14:13.000 | One, we would try and get local SIMs from each country we went to.
00:14:16.000 | Internet, however, was difficult in most places.
00:14:19.000 | I had a 4G router with external aerials so we could point them across the ocean and get service from land.
00:14:25.000 | This time we have Starlink, so it should be different.
00:14:28.000 | Two, sadly, I was using crypto at the time but could not use it directly.
00:14:33.000 | The islands were very much cash economy, but I could use a portal in Australia,
00:14:37.000 | then a WISEcard to withdraw local cash.
00:14:39.000 | And three, yes, same boat.
00:14:41.000 | We left it in Aruba when we finally came home.
00:14:43.000 | We did not trust the flights would actually leave, so could not risk having nowhere to return to by selling it.
00:14:51.000 | Fluke asked a question.
00:14:52.000 | Wow, this is wild.
00:14:54.000 | Being Australian, we were warned to return home immediately or be locked out of the country.
00:14:57.000 | Was there no ability to leave your boat and just fly back when that call came out?
00:15:02.000 | Intrepid responds, no.
00:15:05.000 | France went into lockdown prior to Australia when Italy had its first outbreaks of the pandemic.
00:15:10.000 | Basically, the airport in St. Martin shut, even to medical evacuations.
00:15:15.000 | We had no physical options to fly home for about eight months.
00:15:19.000 | By then, it was financially prohibitive.
00:15:22.000 | Flights from London peaked at $80,000 per person at the worst of it.
00:15:26.000 | Essentially, the quota of 3,000 people was taken up by business travelers who got an exemption to fly out of Australia.
00:15:32.000 | This is why the 50,000 stranded people registered with DFAT essentially stayed at that level for most of the pandemic
00:15:39.000 | which is probably four times that in reality.
00:15:42.000 | This is in stark contrast to New Zealand who ran the quota as a lottery,
00:15:47.000 | and then you bought the flights rather than let airlines use the market to decide who got in.
00:15:52.000 | Even at the end, after almost two years, when we finally got flights out of Los Angeles,
00:15:56.000 | which still cost $50,000 for the family,
00:16:00.000 | Skomo halved the quota one last time,
00:16:03.000 | and American Airlines simply had to cut every second flight and rebooked eight months down the track.
00:16:08.000 | They luckily made that cut and came home to then pay $5,500 in quarantine fees
00:16:13.000 | despite having been vaccinated and having three PCR tests that week.
00:16:18.000 | Six weeks later, American basically stopped flying as they were limited to something like 32 people per jet
00:16:24.000 | under the new rules and only flew freight.
00:16:27.000 | To be honest, that was one of the most frustrating things coming home.
00:16:30.000 | People had this view like, "We gave you four weeks to come home."
00:16:34.000 | And it's like, "FFS, there is no way a lot of people could come home."
00:16:37.000 | The French side of St. Martin does not even have an international airport,
00:16:41.000 | and they closed the border to the Dutch side,
00:16:43.000 | so even if it remained open, there would have been no way to cross.
00:16:47.000 | So I'll stop with all the questions, although I thought it was interesting to talk about.
00:16:52.000 | I want you to think about that story this week as you consider your own situation.
00:16:58.000 | Now, most of us, of course, are never going to face something like that.
00:17:02.000 | Probably it'll be a few more decades before another pandemic comes, maybe 50 years, who knows.
00:17:08.000 | And a global pandemic is a unique risk.
00:17:11.000 | It's the only thing that I can come up with that results in a global closure of borders and such all at the exact same time.
00:17:22.000 | It's the only thing that I know that has that globally simultaneous impact.
00:17:27.000 | There are many other things that can affect regions,
00:17:30.000 | but the only thing I've ever come up with that has that simultaneous global impact is a pandemic.
00:17:36.000 | But it's good to stress test and think about, well, what happens in terms of how do you prepare for that?
00:17:42.000 | And what you see is the importance of being prepared to be isolated.
00:17:48.000 | That leads to physical preparedness.
00:17:50.000 | But more importantly in this case, you see the importance of backup plans from a documentary perspective.
00:17:57.000 | This particular writer, Intrepid, you would think that he was pretty well squared away.
00:18:04.000 | He had a great passport from a great country, a Tier A passport, had the ability to go and live and work in Canada.
00:18:12.000 | That's a good start. And yet found himself completely trapped because it wasn't good enough.
00:18:18.000 | And I tell you what, the pandemic was definitely motivating to me and a whole lot of other people
00:18:24.000 | to make sure you don't only have one residence, but you have multiple countries that you can legally go and live in.
00:18:31.000 | In most cases, I think that tourists are treated better in countries than residents are.
00:18:36.000 | But when it comes to access to a country, residents are treated ineffably better than tourists.
00:18:42.000 | So you want to have high quality residencies and you want to have multiple citizenships, if at all possible.
00:18:49.000 | Multiple places where you can go and live and be treated like a citizen.
00:18:54.000 | And the basic value of citizenship is unrestricted right to enter a country.
00:19:00.000 | How Australia got around with restricting that right is something that is interesting to look at.
00:19:06.000 | They didn't restrict it legally. They used the market to enforce their restrictions.
00:19:11.000 | And so they said, "Oh, Australian citizens can come back."
00:19:14.000 | But they highly limited the entrance of people. And then because Australia is such a remote destination,
00:19:21.000 | they said, "You can come back. And of course, you'll do two weeks of quarantine in an expensive hotel camp that we're going to set up for you."
00:19:29.000 | But then they used the market to limit the flow of people.
00:19:33.000 | And so it was quite an interesting workaround where they forbade their citizens' entrance for a time.
00:19:40.000 | And then they used the market conditions to keep them low.
00:19:44.000 | So Australians, that should affect you dramatically in terms of how your government handled that.
00:19:50.000 | Anyway, I don't have anything more to say. I just want to share that interesting story.
00:19:53.000 | I'll link it in the show notes published on Twitter two days ago.
00:19:56.000 | In closing, make sure to go. And if you're interested in thinking about and planning for solutions and talking with me about this, etc.,
00:20:04.000 | go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical.
00:20:08.000 | Sign up for my event that I'm running in Panama City, Panama in January 2024, expatmoney.com/radical. Sign up today.
00:20:17.000 | With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season.
00:20:22.000 | Because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.
00:20:27.000 | And with a money-back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite.
00:20:32.000 | Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store, Kroger brand has all your favorite things.
00:20:41.000 | Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone.
00:20:44.000 | (upbeat music)