Amulet underway

We arrived at the Soundy Ground bridge entrance to Simpson Lagoon in St. Martins at 1715 in time for the 1730 bridge opening. The bridge only has three opening per day, so better not be late. Once through, we proceeded to the Marina Port Royale, which despite it's name, like most of St. Martin's, was a little long in the tooth. Lots of restaurants as part of the development, and only a couple good. The nearby town of Marigot was pretty interesting, good bakeries, and again more restaurants. Seemed to be lots of illegal activity in the area, one of the hubs of which was a parking lot around 70 yards from our berth. We asked the dock master if there been much crime, and he volunteered that the boat in our berth got boarded in the night, but the security guy, who gets off at 11 PM (some help), chased the guy off. We were well warned. During our evening cocktail we would watch the drug deals commence.

All that aside, the following morning, Thursday at 0900, Addy (a guy) showed up to look at our water maker. Long story short, he couldn't fix it, and recommended reconnecting several hoses that would allow the water maker to produce water manually, bypassing the troublesome computer. We would implement that fix in a couple of weeks time. That afternoon, a young French chap named Lauren came by to fix our depth sounder. We had a spare depth sounder box onboard, and he installed it-one problem solved.

The following day, Friday, a brilliant man from St. Lucia, named Alex came by to work on the generator. Water leaking from the case, so we rigged up a block and tackle to the boom, and hoisted the generator engine off its mounts, then discovered that every hose clamp (8 of them) had corroded through (even though they were stainless). Once replaced, and the engine lowered again, everything worked fine.

During the day on Friday, Melinda was checking her Facebook posts, and discovered the had a high school classmate that was on vacation in St, Martins, so she texted her and made arrangements for she and her husband, (Val and Chris Kelly) to come to the boat for a drink, and later we went out for dinner. Had a splendid time, very nice people.

We didn't feel we could mobilize for an escape from Simpson Bay lagoon on Saturday, and needed the time to re-provision, get diesel (150.4 liters, engine hours 2203.5, generator hours 1372.7)and do some sightseeing, so we agreed that moving the boat out of the lagoon on the 1430 bridge opening Saturday would be the best bet, anchoring the boat in Nettle Bay, then having a late lunch at a French beach club, Le Sand. Lunch was divine, in the perfect setting, palm trees and a white sandy beach. We would leave an hour before daybreak the following day, Sunday for the very long one day sail to Virgin Gorda in the BVI's.

Picture is of Melinda with Val and Chris Kelly on "Amulet" in St. Martins.