Sunday 4th March

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

After yesterday’s drama today would be quiet in comparison. We had arranged to go and officially check out of the country by visiting the Customs and Immigration office at the dock. I had a return trip to the straw market to make in search of the shell jewelry that Rose should have bought when she was here and I promised to try and get for her before we left the island. Whilst Gerry and Dale went to check us out with the authorities Lorie and I went in search of the jewelry. The market seemed very empty of stalls and we thought it was because we were early; the jewelry man wasn’t there so we strolled over to the customs office to join Gerry and wait for Dale who was inside doing paper work. Gerry had had a rap across the knuckles as we were supposed to have got photocopies of Rose and Mark’s air tickets out of the country to show that we hadn’t abandoned them here but they didn’t make a great fuss about it. How were we supposed to know that?! Anyway we paid our 5 Euro departure fee and we are cleared to leave in the morning. Once Dale had also got clearance papers we set off back towards the boulangerie strolling through the still half empty market on the way - still no sign of the jewelry man. We queued for French pastries and coffee and then sat down to stuff our faces with them, yes they were wonderful! We discussed going out to meet Lyn and Peter at the airport in the afternoon and the best way to get there, a taxi for the 4 of us would cost $24 each way whilst a hire car would cost $25 all day – it was a simple decision in the end. We returned to our boats and did some onboard chores before returning to collect a hire car for the afternoon, again we checked the market for the jewelry man – sorry Rose you just weren’t meant to have them. Then we took the scenic route out to the airport, with views of the large racing boats out having a sail – an awesome sight. We arrived at the airport about 30 minutes before Lyn and Peter’s flight was due in so we found our way to the bar (shock horror!) and had a coke each – well the guys had a beer. Then we sat people watching until at long last Gerry spotted Lyn and Peter’s heads amongst the arriving passengers. We bolted down the stairs and flung ourselves at the travel weary couple, they seemed genuinely pleased to see 4 tired, scruffy, grotty yachties greeting them in a foreign airport, for our part we were just pleased that they didn’t disown us on sight! We had a brief half hour to catch up with all the gossip and share some stories then it was time for them to join their bus that was to take them to their boat. It was really great to see you guys even if it was only for a short time, we hope you have a wonderful relaxing time on the 4 masted super yacht – we will be racing you even if you aren’t going in our direction! As we got in the hire car to return to our base I kicked myself – I had taken the camera along to get a photo of us all at the airport and promptly forgot all about it. To make matters worse so had Lorie – I think we must have had too much coke and not enough rum at the time. Once we had returned the hire car Lorie and I voted for a rum punch at one of the dockside restaurants, it was so strong that we had to order something to eat with it (sounds like a good excuse not to cook dinner!) so we ordered pizza which turned out to be terrific followed by crepes and another rum punch. So having eaten dinner it was time to dink back out to the boat, haul the engine onto its stand and tie stuff down ready for an early start in the morning.

Saturday 3rd March

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

It was an extremely windy night and we were awake at various times during the night worrying that we may be blown away, which of course never happened. Gerry was up earlier than me with the generator going and the water maker on. When I finally got up, it wasn’t too late, he cooked breakfast. I think he has finally lost all sense of time and days as he only usually cooks breakfast on a Sunday, what ever – it was good. We spent a couple of hours lazily reading and then decided that we were going to go ashore and do a bit of provisioning. Lorie and I had discussed the merits of shopping on both the French and the Dutch sides of the island. We had concluded that the French side seemed a little cheaper and had a greater variety of USA imported foods so we planned to shop there first, the big drawback to this plan was that the supermarket was quite a distance from the dock whereas the Dutch side had a supermarket very close by the dinghy dock at Shrimpy’s. It was almost 11.00hrs by the time Gerry and I loaded the bags into the dink and stopped by Gypsy Palace to collect Dale and Lorie, they were just waiting for us and when we got to their boat we boarded for a short while to discuss departure plans and weather predictions for the next few days. Our plans are to leave St Martin on Monday morning and head to St Barts, not check in there but overnight and leave at some ghastly hour of the morning ( 03.00hrs was the time being thrown around) to make the passage to Antigua. This presumes that the forecast of a couple of days of good weather eventuates! Anyway more of that as we get underway again. Once we had finished discussing the trip we all piled into the dinghies and set off for the French side of town with plans to investigate a couple of tie up places near to the supermarket. Firstly we tried the fuel dock as it is a short walk over to the supermarket from there, no joy – we couldn’t tie up there, next we tried the Budget Marine store – it was a bit further to walk but we were willing to give it a go, unfortunately the tide was ripping through the area which is right next to the bridge so we decided that it wasn’t a good spot to leave the dinghies, then on to the garage which fronts the water – no luck there either they just didn’t want us tying up. We then decided our only chance was to go into the dock and walk the distance, this was alright going with empty bags but would be a long trip with heavy grocery bags. Lorie had thought to bring 2 bags which have wheels; I’d left our one on the boat as Gerry said I could only take either the wheelie bag or the backpack NOT both. The backpack has a larger capacity hence it was the chosen one! We shopped for the essential things and had to forgo buying heavy stuff like cans of soda as we couldn’t carry them. We loaded our backpack and Lorie very kindly offered us the use of her second wheelie bag to save us having to carry the backpack. Gerry gets very bored and impatient with grocery shopping and would have not bothered at all if I hadn’t insisted that we need some things, I just wonder what he thinks we would have been eating if I hadn’t gone grocery shopping, M.R.E.s I fear! Being as it was the French side I bought some very nice pate and cheeses and of course baguettes to eat with it, I didn’t notice Gerry refusing it either. Once we had trudged our way back to the dinghies we arranged to do our unpacking and storing and then meet up later at Shrimpy’s for internet, drinks and dinner. So for the next couple of hours I rearranged the fridge, putting everything I will need first at the bottom – it would work its own way down there anyway! And checking to see what we still needed to buy as I knew we hadn’t bought all that we required. At 16.00hrs with computer tucked into the watertight bag and our wheelie bag (!) and a small backpack in tow we dinked over to the dinghy dock at Shrimpy’s on the Dutch side. Dale and Lorie were already there and we joined them to check our emails and load our blog onto the site. We were delighted to see an email from Lyn and Peter Denoncourt (Kite) telling us that they were arriving in St Martin on the 4th March to join a 4 masted sailing ship for a week of cruising around the area, we discussed the chance of going out to meet them at the airport – a discussion to continue in the morning as local events caught our attention at this point. Shrimpy’s was fairly full and the dinghy dock was crowded as always, we had seats facing the dock which turned out to be the ringside specials as the dramas that followed were best viewed from where we were seated. As we watched the owner of a trawler in the first slip next to the dinghy dock began to untie dinghies – ours included, we raced out and rescued ours in time to see this man bolt cut the chains on a couple of other dinghies. The next thing we knew he was untying his boat and motoring out of his slip with 2 dinghies towing behind him. No one seemed to worry about it and he returned a few minutes later without the dinghies and tied back up in his slip. I have to add at this point that the dinghies that he removed were knocking against the side of his boat, ours wasn’t but he had to untie ours to get to the lines of the other two and although there are NO DINGHY signs in some parts of the dock there were no signs where these dinghies were tied up. In the time he had been gone another couple of dinghies had tied up to the cleat and on his return he began cutting them free too. Dale alerted a young English sailor off of one of the racing yachts that his dinghy was on the cleat where this man was cutting them free and the young man walked out towards the dock just in time to see this man put the bolt cutter to his dinghy’s paynter, he called out to the man that he was on his way to move the dinghy but it had no effect – the man continued to cut the dinghy free from the cleat and let it drift off. Luckily the young man managed to save his dinghy, a shouting match between the two of them then began. Meanwhile a couple arrived back at the dock to find their dinghy was missing, by now the entire clientele of Shrimpy’s was watching the unfolding drama , as I said we had ringside seats so saw and heard most of it. Everyone was adding their two penny worth of thoughts to the happenings and a full scale shouting match broke out between some of the young sailor’s boat mates and the slip renter. They moved a bit further away from where we were sitting and the next thing we saw was the start of a fist fight, I can’t honestly say who threw the first punch but we all saw the slip renter go down like a lead balloon and the young man was hustled away to his boat by one of his boat mates. Dale had gone and spoken to the dock police about the dinghies prior to the fight breaking out, they had shown little interest but now everyone wanted them to come and sort out the problems of missing dinghies, cut paynters and fist fights. The owners of the second “towed” dinghy arrived around this time to the madness that was overtaking the dock. Eventually the police put in an appearance and tried to make some sense of the situation. One had to feel sorry for them as they had quite a few angry dinghy owners trying to tell their stories on one side and this one slip renter and his mate on the other side. The police wanted the young sailor to return as they were going to charge him with assault and wanted him to pay medical costs for the man who had cut his dinghy loose; apparently in the fist fight the slip renter had lost a couple of teeth, we don’t know if this was caused by a fist connecting or from him hitting the pole and then the cement as he fell. In the end someone went and retrieved the 2 “towed” dinghies, the marina owner paid the medical costs, the young man wasn’t charged with anything and everyone tying up was advised not to use that cleat. I’m not sure what was said to the slip renter but I hope that it was something as what he did amounted to stealing dinghies and willfully damaging the paynters that he cut with bolt cutter – I feel sure that it could have been sorted out in a much calmer way without all the nasty stuff but it made for an entertaining hour or so. It could compare with all the best soap dramas on TV and definitely be the winner! Towards the tail end of this little drama we were all looking skywards as there was lunar eclipse happening at 19.20hrs, unfortunately it was a very cloudy night and the moon vanished behind them just before the eclipse was due so we didn’t get to see it. Gerry and I then went to the supermarket just around the corner and purchased a few more things that we were needing for the onward trip including the sodas, we loaded these back into our dink then went back into Shrimpy’s and ordered dinner which we ate at the bar. By now everything had settled back down and the place was beginning to empty out. Once we had finished dinner it was time to crawl over everyone else’s dinghy into our own and head back to our boat for the night. What we had thought was going to be a quiet and uneventful day turned into quite a drama. It will be interesting to hear the talk of it on the cruiser’s net on Monday.

Friday 2nd March

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

An extremely quiet day today, Lorie and Dale had invited the people from their sister boat for a return visit at cocktail hour so they were going to spend the day evicting spiders and chasing dust bunnies from under every surface. I woke up feeling a bit under the weather with aches and pains similar to the onset of a cold so stayed in bed until an indecent hour. Gerry took off in the dink to get some anti foul paint from Budget Marine and to fill our jerry cans with fuel; he also took the trash with him. By the time he returned I had started to make some savoury profiteroles for cocktail hour on Gypsy Palace. I helped Gerry to haul the paint and fuel on board and then we spent a good deal of time deciding the best place to store the paint – it is extremely heavy and really needs to be as low down in the boat as possible. Eventually I suggested that he empty his tool locker and put them into a cupboard and store the paint in the tool locker, it turned out to be the ideal place and we soon had all the floorboards screwed back into place and cupboards reorganized. I finished making the cocktail savouries and then it was time for a short nap before heading over to Gypsy Palace to meet Dale and Lorie’s new acquaintances. We spent a couple of hours chatting about how we all came to be in St Martin and what our plans were. The new friends had to leave in time for dinner but Gerry and I stayed with Dale and Lorie and learnt how to play Mexican train dominos, it was basically a variation on regular dominos played with a set of double twelves, I think we picked up the game pretty quickly but I feel sure that Dale and Lorie are making up more rules as they go along! After 3 hands (?) we packed away the dominos and headed back to our boat for an early night.

Thursday 1st March

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

As we were originally going to be leaving today it was necessary to go back to customs to see about extending our entry visa, Gerry and Dale elected to go by themselves leaving Lorie and I to do whatever we needed to do on the boats. The delay in our departure has been caused by a gale in the Caribbean, leaving us with very high wind gusts which are not ideal for cruising and as we are safe and protected here in the lagoon we decided that we would stay put for the few extra days. Of course there is also the fact that the Heineken regatta is on for the next few days here and the place is teeming with very large racing boats and team parties etc. We have seen some of the boats practicing and they certainly move well, they also dwarf us but they are worth millions of dollars and our boat definitely isn’t. Gerry and Dale took off in Dale’s dinghy, leaving me our one. I had little to do on the boat so decided to go over to Gypsy Palace and annoy Lorie, I collected they computer along with my bag of stuff that always gets dragged ashore and climbed into the dink. Then I did something I will never do again – I untied the dink before I had the engine running. I spent a panicky few minutes desperately tugging the starter cord as the dink drifted away from our boat, it just didn’t want to turn over and to make matters worse there were no oars in the dink – ever since Gerry lost one in Georgetown, leaving us with only one, we haven’t carried it in the dink (we really must get around to replacing the lost one.) Of course there was no one in sight to help me out as I continued to drift so I had to persevere with tugging the starter and eventually it fired and I breathed a sigh of relief and steered the dink over to Gypsy Palace. Lorie was typing up her blog for the last few days so I sat chatting and interrupting her thoughts whilst she did it. The guys arrived back and told us that they had had a wasted trip, after queuing for ages at the customs office they were told that they didn’t have to do anything, it would all be sorted out when we check out! Once they had told the tale it was time for us to depart, Gerry and I were going into Shrimpy’s to see if we could hook up to the internet and load the blogs whilst Dale and Lorie were visiting a sister boat to see the alterations that the owners had made before joining us at Shrimpy’s. The dinghy dock at Shrimpy’s appears to be constantly full and we had to push and shove our way through the dinghies already tied up to be able to tie up ourselves and scramble ashore. We ordered pies for lunch and set about connecting to the internet, reading emails first and then we spent ages trying to log into the blog site, eventually Gerry had to change the security settings on the computer to allow us to log on. I then spent a couple of hours loading the pre written blogs and photos, far longer than I had planned so I may have to reduce the amount of photos that I have been posting to make it a bit quicker in future. The good thing is that the WIFI connection is free, if you plug into power though it costs $2 – still a bargain considering what we have paid in other places. Great service Shrimpy’s thanks. Dale and Lorie joined us to do their internet stuff and tell us about the boat they had visited. They had invited the owners over to their boat for a return visit tomorrow and Lorie was having a panic attack about cleaning up the boat before the visit, I don’t know why as it never looks too untidy and after all they live on it, surely some mess is to be expected? No doubt Lorie will be scrubbing and polishing for the next 24hrs until THE VISIT, funny but she never seems to worry about that stuff when we visit! Once we had completed our internet stuff Lorie and I wandered around to the supermarket just around the corner and bought a couple of things that we needed and then it was time to untangle our dinks from the rest in the dock and head back to our boats for a couple of hours before returning to the French side for dinner. We had arranged to meet up with Gary and Linda – friends of Dale and Lorie from their travels and the 6 of us had dinner at one of the waterside restaurants on the French side, I think we were all a little disappointed with the meal, it wasn’t as good as some of the other places we have eaten but we can vote with our feet – we won’t go back there! Then it was time to return to our boats for the night, the ride back out to our boat was pretty uncomfortable, we bounced around badly for the 10 minutes it took to get there. We overshot our boat – didn’t have the GPS with us but we found it in the end and tucked ourselves away for the night. I haven’t mentioned that we are anchored just off a point in the harbour called Witches Tit – if you need to know what one of these looks like see the photo!

Wednesday 28th February

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

SAFE TRIP HOME ROSE AND MARK, WE HOPE YOU HAD FUN, IT WAS GREAT TO HAVE YOU WITH US – COME AGAIN!

As expected we were awake long before the alarm went off. Once dressed we gathered some edibles into a bag, packed the luggage into the dink and took off for the dock. Much discussion has been had about the state of the world to which Rose and Mark are returning – they have nightmare visions of piles of dirty laundry, stacks of almost empty pizza boxes, inches of dust on everything, a dishwasher full of dirty dishes, overflowing rubbish bins, unsorted recycling, empty car fuel tank, hundreds of extra miles on their car, rooms rented out to friends, phone bills to rival a corporate entity, dead plants, empty fridge (except for that squiggy green thing that is hiding at the bottom) and bills for things that they never knew they owned. We have tried our best to reassure them that their children will have it all cleaned up and under control, but note to Lucy, Katie and Matthew – you only have until Friday mid morning! It’s always sad to say goodbye to friends at the airport and this was no exception; we will miss you guys, you can always come again now that you are international sailors! I have to say that as novices they did a fine job, not one spew and they took to rum drinking like they had done it all their lives (I suspect they were closet rum drinkers before they even stepped on to the boat). We had kept the car overnight so once Gerry had collected it from the parking area we loaded it up and took off for the airport where we made sure our friends were checked in and on their way before Gerry and I returned the car to the rental office. Then it was time to meet up with Dale and Lorie, exchange dinks and have breakfast before wandering around the shops and then paying a visit to Budget Marine for those “must have” boat bits that we need. We still need to try and get replacement fair leads for the bow (I suspect we will have to get different ones to the ones we had, if we can find some that will fit). We did get some new line for our jib furler which was just as well as the old line was beginning to fray, plus we got spare bearings for our wind generator so that was a bonus. We had a very late lunch back onboard our boat and then had a short afternoon nap – trying to catch up from last night. Then at 16.45hrs we had to meet up with a couple who had put out a call for Bahamas charts on the cruiser’s net, we had told them we had some and they offered to swap or buy them, we were after charts for the area from Trinidad to Panama which they had so it looked like being a good swap. We dinked into Shrimpy’s (a boaties haven which does laundry, has WIFI and of course a bar) and met up with a very nice young German couple and arranged our chart swap, another man chanced by whilst we were swapping and bought our Exuma guide book from us, it was a good deal all round. We chatted for a while about our various passages and shared advice and information – all useful. Then it was time for a shrimp dinner which turned out to be very good. Dale and Lorie had joined us for dinner and were talking of going on to a piano bar for the evening. Much as I would have liked to go both Gerry and I were tired so we opted out and returned to our boat for an early night.

Tuesday 27th February

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

Once we were all out of bed and dressed we dinked into the French side marina and tied up, Gerry and Mark took off to hire a car for the day whilst Rose and I meandered after them browsing through the shore line market stalls until they found us again and hurried us along so that we could go sightseeing in the car. With Gerry driving and Mark navigating we took off to circumnavigate the island on roads which varied from very good (in the most touristy places) to goat tracks in the interior. We wound our way up the hills and at the top of one particular hill there was a lookout point which was a top spot for a photo or two of the Lagoon, then it was back in the car and more winding our way through both the Dutch and French sides of the island. Interestingly there are no borders to cross; you just go from one side to the other without having to do any of the customs stuff – that only needs to be done at the ports. The two halves of the island sort of meld together, apart from the restaurant fare, supermarkets stock and languages (French / English and Dutch / English) there seems to be very little difference between the two sides. We ended up in the Orleans Quarter of the French side as we wanted to visit the butterfly farm there. We missed the turning but a conveniently placed turn around lay by had us back on track (obviously a lot of people miss the turning for there to be this lay by in the middle of nowhere – maybe a big sign post would help). The farm was only small but well done, consisting of a netted enclosure with tropical plants, water features, quiet areas with benches, dirt gravel pathways and display areas for the pupa / chrysalis and caterpillar development. One of the farm operators gives guided tours which proved to be quite interesting, I now know the life cycle of the butterfly! Then of course there were the butterflies themselves, gorgeous colours and sizes flying around you as you walk through the enclosure. Mark had charge of the camera and took a million shots, some really good ones and some which were spoilt by the butterfly being unco-operative and taking off just as the camera shutter clicked. We were all quite enchanted by the place, until the rain began then it was time to duck for cover and have a beer. We bundled ourselves back into the car and set off once again to tour the rest of the island. The scenery comprised of hills, small townships, salt ponds, sea and lagoon views –it was a very pleasant drive. We found our way back to the French port and decided to go to one of the French boulangeries for a coffee and pastry. Unable to eat the food Mark went off for a short walk whilst the 3 of us indulged in wonderful French patisserie stuff. Waddling afterwards Rose and I headed back to the market for a further browsing session whilst Gerry and Mark went in search of Dale and Lorie, arranging to meet up with them at 17.30hrs for diner ashore. After a couple of purchases Rose and I met up with the guys and had a drink then Rose and Mark walked up to Fort Louis whilst Gerry and I went in search of a hammock. Having achieved our goals we all met back at the dock where Dale and Lorie joined us. The next problem was deciding where to eat – so many nice menus and casual style restaurants around the area, we eventually settled on one and enjoyed a very good meal there, helped down by some wine and a post dinner drink (Lucy, Katie and Matthew – you parents are leading us astray, you might have warned us that they were such drunks!) Finally it was time to return to the boat, we took Dale’s dink and they took ours – an arrangement that we had made previously as we needed a bit more room to carry the luggage to the airport in the morning. Yes, it was already the end of Rose and Marks’ stay, how time flies when you’re having rum! Back on our boat it was time to pack the bags, burn photos onto disks and become morose before bedtime. We set the alarm for 06.30hrs knowing that none of us would sleep very well.

Monday 26th February

(French) Simpson Bay Lagoon
St. Martin

18 02.683 N
63 05.508 W

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY JULIA, WE HOPE IT WAS A GOOD ONE FOR YOU

We had much debate between the 2 boats about what we needed to do about customs today, as we had cleared into the French side then left without clearing out, we weren’t sure if we could just enter on the Dutch side and go straight through the imaginary line in the lagoon to the French side or if we would have to clear out of the French side, clear in and out on the Dutch side and then clear back in on the French side when we crossed the imaginary line in the lagoon. Phew – it sounds too complicated reading that back! We listened to the cruisers net and asked the question in a less complicated way and then decided that we could just enter on the Dutch side and go straight to the French side without further customs and immigration interaction – as I type we could be sitting targets for the Dutch authorities! The bridge on the Dutch side opens at 09.30hrs for inbound traffic so at 09.15hrs we were doing figure of eights outside the bridge along with the 20 or so other boats that wanted to go through. When the green light went on it was like the start of a race, all the boats jostling to get into position. We got through with no problem; the depth clearance on this side is a much healthier 17feet – no chance of us going aground and being embarrassed in the channel! Once inside the lagoon we oohed and aahed at the mega luxury yachts that were lined up by the dozen (we know they aren’t happy!) and wove our way through the fleet of various sizes, shape, colours and makes of boats that were already anchored there until we found a promising spot to drop our anchor on the French side. We dropped our anchor and once set we prepared the dinghy for a trip into town to try and organize a change of flight for Rose and Mark so that they could connect up with their already booked flight out of Puerto Rico. We found the travel agent and had an angel sitting on our shoulders; they managed to book out on a flight which connects with no problem. Once that was arranged it was time for a quick lunch, an even quicker browse around the shops and then return to our boat for an afternoon nap. On our trip back to the boat we passed Dale and Lorie who queried where we had anchored and if we had drifted – not a good moment! As we approached the spot where we had anchored we spotted out boat quite a distance away from where we had left it, it had definitely dragged anchor in our absence. We climbed aboard to find that some kind souls had jumped on our boat and thrown out the second anchor to secure us. After asking around we located the anchoring fairies and duly thanked them with bottles of rum. Luckily for us no damage was done to us or any other boat during the drifting, though we are amazed as to how we didn’t hit something – obviously our boat can steer its own course through a minefield of other boats! Then it was time for us to re anchor, Gerry hauled in the second anchor that the fairies had set and then tried to haul in our original anchor – it was unbelievably difficult and eventually it appeared at the water level. Gerry couldn’t haul it in any further as it had apparently got half the harbour attached to it. We had to reset the secondary anchor and then Gerry had to get in the dink and clean off the primary anchor before we could change them back over so that the primary anchor was holding us. During the process the guys who had set the secondary anchor to stop us drifting were pointing and taking photos, when Gerry went to clean the harbour off our anchor I took a couple of photos to show what was on the anchor – how we managed to drift with that attached to us we simply can’t fathom out but we did! Once we were re anchored it was time to distribute the rum to our anchor fairies, have a cold drink and then catch up with some much needed sleep before heading ashore for dinner.
We decided to take the dink into the Dutch side and see what the yacht club was like for dinner, on arriving there we took one look at the place and decided that it wasn’t what we were looking for and started to head out of the car park only to be called back by some old guy who said that we couldn’t leave our dinks tied to that particular dock unless we were gong to the yacht club. A quick decision had us fighting our way to the bar in the yacht club for a drink whilst this old guy handed us the menus, we perused the menu and each of us decided that we didn’t want anything that was on the menu – it was all snack stuff and we were looking for a proper meal. We drank our drinks and then we snuck out of the door when no one was paying us any attention, making a quick dash over the bridge towards the restaurant area. An Argentinean steak house took our fancy and we ordered some pretty good dishes between us. The food was bought to the table on small charcoal fired braziers from which we helped ourselves. We were all very happy with our choice – helped no doubt by the couple of pitchers of Margaritas (another first for Rose and Mark who are becoming international alcoholics like the rest of us!) Going back to our dinks was fun, we had to sneak into the yacht club dock and get away without being chastised by the man who thought we should eat there. With all the boats at anchor in the lagoon we were quite glad that we had thought to take our hand held GPS ashore with us, it made finding our boat in the dark so much easier, maybe we should do that all the time – if only we could remember it.

Sunday 25th February

Simpson Bay
(Dutch) Sint Maarten

18 02 N
63 06 W

Despite still being tired we were up at 07.00hrs as we were moving inside the lagoon today. Unfortunately our information in the cruising guide was out of date and the bridge opened and closed again before we though it was due to open. Having missed our chance to go through into the lagoon we elected to dink ashore, clear customs and have a brief look around the place. Dale and Lorie beat us to shore and we met up with them at the water front market then we set off for the customs and immigration office. The legal stuff only took a few minutes to complete and we were all very impressed with the friendly and efficient officer on duty who made it all so easy. Once we had cleared in we set off to find a bank and have a look around the place. As it was Sunday a lot of the shops were closed so we decided that we could save them for another day. The ladies decided to browse through the waterfront market which sold a lot of tourist rubbish, some nice fabric sarongs, blouses etc. and a few nice artifacts. We all bought something, much to the men’s disgust. We met up with the men at a bar / café where they had settled in for the duration, as we pulled up chairs to join them we invited the man who was on the table where we were stealing the chairs from to join us, to our surprise he did and we enjoyed his company and conversation for the next hour or so before he had to leave. We had lunch and then made our way back out to our boats. Once back onboard we quickly became aware of the increasingly uncomfortable swell that was building and then suddenly there was a loud twang. I called out to Gerry to investigate as he was in the cockpit and I was down below, it sounded like one of our anchor bridle ropes had snapped but as it turned out it was even worse – the port side fair lead had been put under such pressure from the swell that it snapped the forward half clean off. Although we can live without it, we are unlikely to be able to find a replacement for it as they no longer produce them for our vintage boat and the newer boats don’t have them at all, guess we will be flea market hunting! As the swell was increasing and the next bridge opening wasn’t until 17.30hrs ( when it wasn’t a high tide which we need to enter the lagoon at this side) we made a decision to up anchor and motor around to the other side of St Martin and spend the night in Simpson Bay on the Dutch side “Sint Maarten”. A quick note here to tell you that St. Martin / Sint Maarten is one island which is split almost in half between the French and the Dutch (the French side being slightly larger). The French side, St Martin, is to the north whilst the Dutch Sint Maarten is to the south. Customs have to be cleared in both as you would for any 2 countries anywhere and each side has different administrations and laws just to confuse you. There is no fee for clearing in the French side but there is a fee to clear in the Dutch side. There are 2 entrances to the lagoon which has a common midway border; these entrances, one in each country, have different depth clearances and the deeper draft clearance is on the Dutch side. The French side clearance is only about 7feet at mean low water – not much lee way for us with a 5 foot 10 inch draft. Anyway back to our moving – we motored around the coast to the Dutch side and set anchor in Simpson Bay, we would enter the lagoon in the morning through the Dutch side. We had cocktails and snacks in the cockpit at sundown and as we did so we were aware that there seemed to be quite a swell here too – even though we were on the other side of the island, but it was no where near as violent as on the French side, until we went to bed. During the night the wind howled around us and the swell increased until it was too uncomfortable for any of us to sleep. We were all glad to see the sun rise even though we were sleep deprived and a little nauseous from the motion.

Saturday 24th February

Marigot Bay
(French) St Martin

18 05.30 N
63 06.40 W

It was another of those early morning starts today, the alarm went off at 04.30hrs and we crawled out of bed threw on the first clothing we could find and staggered out to the cockpit. Gerry prepared the boat whilst I stowed away anything that would move during today’s voyage of discovery. Rose and Mark surfaced minutes before we dropped the mooring line, in time to see us leaving the harbour in darkness. For the first time since they arrived everyone donned their life jacket as the trip we were about to undertake was the first that Rose and Mark would experience out of sight of land, it would take us 14 ½ hours to travel the 76 miles to St Martin. Exiting the harbour wasn’t much fun in the dark, we just followed the track line that we made on the GPS when we came into the place. Gerry positioned himself on the foredeck whilst I drove, the idea being that he would give me warning of anything that might be in the collision line. Once clear of the harbour we made a slight turn to starboard and past Necker Island – owned by the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson (Dick to his friends!), we thought of stopping by for breakfast but were pretty certain that we wouldn’t be well received at that time of day – in fact at any time of day, so we just took a couple of pictures and kept motoring past. The sun rose and the day revealed a fairly calm sea and light winds, if you’ve been reading this blog carefully for a while you’ll know that the wind was coming from the only direction that we seem to encounter – it was on the nose, with no chance of us being able to sail. The whole trip was easy, no dramas but very boring as we saw nothing to report until we were just off of St Martin, Dale called us up on the radio and asked if we had noticed the funnel cloud that was to our starboard stern, we hadn’t noticed but we quickly spotted it and as we watched it developed further and became a water spout, it was a long way away from us so it presented no problems there were also several other developing funnels – it was just as well that they were behind us, it was the first time Gerry and I along with Rose and Mark had ever witnessed this natural phenomenon. The next thing that happened was Mark spotted a dead turtle floating in the water, there was no obvious reason for it to be dead – just a sad sight in the water. About an hour out from St Martin the sun set, another first for our guests to see it whilst under way. We put our navigation lights on and continued on until we were just outside the bridge at St Martin where we were going to anchor overnight. Gerry did his bit on the bow whilst I steered us to our anchoring point. We could see some very large yachts at anchor, we presumed they were here for the race week, and we anchored well out of their way. We quickly threw together some dinner then it was time for showers and an early night as we were all pretty tired.