Our current Lat/Lon is 17 57.3 N; 62 54.2 W

We have left St. Maarten and quite frankly are relieved to be out of there. Don't get me wrong, St. Maarten is a great place and definitely serves a purpose. There are an abundance of marine and food stores, fine restaurants and fun bars, several Laundromats (although no do-it-yourself as far as we can tell), beaches we can walk to after a dinghy ride and an international airport with reasonable prices to the US. But here's the thing. The abundance of stores makes it a crowded place, the streets are dirty with broken glass, dog crap and no sidewalks, the laundry services are expensive compared to other places, the surf at the beach is often too rough and the jets taking off and landing from that convenient international airport provide constant noise pollution morning to night and sometimes they are downright startling. I have been known to reflexively duck when one suddenly shoots overhead upon taking off if we happen to be in its take-off path, tooting along in the dinghy without thinking about much. The KLM jets are the worse because they're so huge. To wrap up my list of complaints about the Lagoon at Simpson Bay there is no swimming there. I miss that most of all.

But all of that is in the past. On Tuesday morning we left without incident (always a good thing) through the 10:15 Causeway Bridge out of the Lagoon and then through the 10:30 Simpson Bay Bridge. We were free! Our friend Bruce on s/v Wild Matilda who we've known since Trinidad and who we ran into shortly after we arrived in the Lagoon left at the same time and together we motored 2.5 hrs to a marine park off of St. Barts called Ile Fourchue. Bruce told us about this place and while we've passed it numerous times going between St. Barts and St. Maarten, we never really considered stopping for some unknown reason. Our loss! The mooring balls are free, snorkeling is quite good especially near the dinghy mooring ball, views from the hillside are excellent and it's not crowded here. Best of all? We can all swim. The water is as clear as the Bahamas (almost), clean and warm with no real current or waves. Many little sea turtles swim around (Luna has been on turtle watch and at least she hasn't barked at them the way she does dolphins), the fish are jumping and swim around the boat looking for handouts. There is also an abundance of conch which we left alone since it is a marine park. Luna is happy. Ed is happy. I've done water aerobics twice so far and am also happy. Bruce seems happy, too but for all I know he might be grumpy and simply faking a happy look. I don't think so; I think he's happy too.

There is a change in weather coming which according to all reports will bring a swell, squalls and strong wind. We'll leave this morning for the port of Gustavia (a short jump from here) where everything will be easier if the forecast pans out. I've added our lat/lon if you want to use it for the map to see where we are. If it doesn't work, I can fix it when we have Internet, which might be later today. It's both a drag when we have no access to Internet and a sweet slice of simplicity at its best. Lucky for you (and me) I can post remotely through our single sideband radio (ssb), albeit without photos. I have lots of pictures to share from our brief time here and if the weather is lousy there'll be a good opportunity for posting photos while waiting out the storms.