"Oh, Dear..." said Dave.
"Yes... " said I, having a sip of my freshly made, espresso type of coffee.

"It's been a month..." said Dave
"Yes..." said I, with another Hot Gulp of the Guilts.

A month of admittedly self-imposed, I have seemingly nothing of relevance or interest to write of because we're being oh-so-boring and not adventurous travellers, or perhaps I couldn't find the exact words that matched the daily gamut of emotions, but mostly it was a complete case of intermittent and huge lack of Wi-Fi, hiatus.

(And speaking of lack of WiFi, if you haven't already done so, click LIKE on our Sailing Banyan Facebook page, as even though we haven't been blogging, we have been able to update our status every couple of days or so to keep you updated on our shenanigans).

And then both of our jaws dropped, in that comical type of way, that jaws drop as if they held a cement-type-of-weight, say like in those caricature type of cartoon clips, because that means we've been here, HERE being between anchoring in the Simpson Bay Lagoon, on the lee shore of the Palapa Marina,



and sitting pretty in a slip in Simpson Bay Marina,



and back to anchoring in the Simpson Bay Lagoon,



for one month. ONE MONTH !



That means that we have tuned into VHF 10 at 07:30 every single morning (except Sunday's), and listened to it chirp a "Good morning and Welcome to St Martin, this is Mike of Shrimpy's Laundry..." for 28 consecutive days !! And yet it's felt like, what, only a week??

This is what happens when you reach a duty-free shopping mecca, like Sint Maarten, and have a list of STUFF that needs buying and doing. Not that we had anything major (or so we thought) that needed doing, but all the little things (and big things) have added up to a month of BUSY-NESS.



There have been many many trips to Island Water World and Budget Marine and ElecTec, each one of them with their own dinghy dock to tie up to, where we shopped till we dropped and happily overweighed our dinghy with all our purchases, and then tried to dodge the rain squalls home.

And oh, we were introduced to ACE, which is an amazing mix between Canadian Tire (on the first floor) and Winners Homesense (on the second floor). There's also Napa, and the Kitchen Store, and Cash'N'Carry and Cost-U-Less bulk type stores, where there weren't enough wheelbarrows to bring home the bags of STUFF we bought.

Which then of course, led us to having to empty, organize, clean, re-organize, clean, purge, organize some more, you get the idea? For example, chart tables got emptied, cleaned, sorted using the little white trays we got at ACE, and put back together again,



and where we discovered that somehow, when we left Nova Scotia almost 2 years ago now, we obviously thought that bringing not one, not two, but three BOXES of staples would be an impressively grand idea.



That's 15,000 staples, plus whatever is currently in the stapler. We haven't used a-one. That's a total WTF moment!

All storage areas were emptied, wiped, checked for bugs and mold and such,
"We are bug free and mold free, and dust free and clean" I happily chirped as I lay upside down, in a yoga-esque type of position, wiping the last of the dust bunnies away.

"How did the Vacu-Seal bags last?" asked Dave, and I was pleased to report that all had held their vacuum for the last 6 months or so that we have test-trialed them.

I had placed Dryer Sheets in between the layers of towels, comforters and clothes that had been sucked into thin layers of submission, and as I unsealed the bag, my nose scrunched up, as I sang, "...and it smells nice, too..."



If you're ever looking for a mini-vac for your boat, trust us on this one, get the ShopVac. For $20 it's an amazing and powerful, compact, easy-to-use little beast that does an impressive job !!

And somehow, somewhere in the day, in a true comedy of errors, I even found the time to bleach-wash our FroliSleep System.



Ditch bag got emptied, and needs re-stocking (that list of things that needs doing, somehow never disappears, does it?!) but look,



what are we keeping only one work glove for (and what happened to the other one?) and where I happily organized myself into such a frenzy that Dave just recently unhappily spent the better part of one morning looking for a tool that I have no recollection of "hiding" somewhere that I obviously thought was a good idea, at the time!

We spent a good week in Simpson Bay Marina, where we got together with a couple of other cruisers, shopped around for a best price type of deal, and eventually installed the 200 feet of shiny new G43 anchor chain we'd bought. 200 feet would allow us to double it's life, by end-to-ending it every now and then.



Banyan's topsides got a wash and wax,



that allowed the daily rain showers to pool in beautiful little puddles on the deck,



and the fresh water attracted some pretty visitors.



We called in a Spectra technician to service our Water-Maker which has been kind of acting funny for a while now. A fix of the bushings while in Grenada did the job for the last few months, although Dave has suspected something on the electronic side of things for awhile now, so it was "time to get 'er done".

Spectra is offering us a great deal on an upgrade to a new control board,



and our 9 year old membrane is also being replaced. In the mean-time, we're playing a waiting game, all on island time.

In 28 days, we've watched many friends go,



and many friends come,



and we are proud to say that an impressive show of glorious Canadian Red and White flags seems to have monopolized the anchorage. Go Canada!

Life on the Dutch Side is fêted by cruiser get-togethers with the following schedule: Monday's at Lagoonies, Wednesday's at Barnacles, and Friday's at the Yacht Club, where the sailing school is ready to teach the young'uns some sailing,



while everyone else congregates for Happy Hour that coincides with the 5 o'clock inbound bridge opening as we watch the MegaYachts squeeze their way in.



It's been a month, indeed !!



Thanks for being patient with us while we've sorted ourselves out. Thanks for writing to us, asking how we were doing. Thanks for caring and thanks for reading. We've missed y'all.