Saturday, April 14, 2012

After finding the electronics guys and identifing the right part to purchase, then stopping at Budget Marine to buy it, oh, and a few other items we might be needing, we are ready for the rigger. Wednesday, he was able to install our new windex in just over an hour and viola…we have speed and direction again.

St. Martin is a duty free port, so if you need IT, this is about the best place to buy IT…whatever IT is. So, we have made the rounds to the Island Water World, Budget, and Ace Hardware store, as well as the town of Marigot this week, where we found Seraphina’s as wonderful as ever, and in addition to the usual array of vendors and booths we discovered a sidewalk sale on Saturday. Lee and Cindy on Tranquility, introduced us to a terrific Ice Cream / Gelato place on the lagoon called Carousel, so named for the beautiful Venitian Carousel they have. And one afternoon, after ice cream we headed over to the yacht club to watch the bridge opening. The 4:30 outbound traffic included two large sailing mega yachts, one headed to Ft. Lauderdale…which they intend to make in 5 days…WOW!

One thing I really need to learn is how to operate the dingy, so Saturday I was in charge of all our errands…Driving the dingy is actually pretty easy…what is hard is stopping, docking, trying to get back to the boat or pier without banging into it…this takes a little (or in my case, A LOT) of practice. However running wide open at 100 miles, (ok – maybe 25!) per hour is great fun!

They are predicting a wind event this Sunday, so we are all getting ready to hunker down, and weather the winds which are predicted to be up to 30 in the gusts.