French St. Martin
05 December 2014 | 18 07.013'N:62 59.235'W, Tintamarre Island
Bob

N18.07.013; W 62.59.235 December 5, 2014 Tintamarre Island; St. Martin (French side) We arrived in Marigot, French St. Martin at 0800 on Monday Dec. 01 after an uneventful night crossing from the BVIs. We anchored out and then set the dingy in and proceeded to the Â"capitainerieÂ" to clear customs. Once done, we took a short walk, bought lunch and headed back to the boat to catch up on some sleep after the all night sail. Next morning we went exploring the back streets in Marigot. It was amazing to see all of the small shops with very nice clothing. (Expensive) There are also tons of restaurants and small bars as well French bakeries. (we picked up a couple of croissants and small quiches to have back on the boat, just had one this morning actually) You could easily spend a fortune here. Tour buses bring vacationers from the Dutch side so I guess that is where the bulk of their business comes from. We took the dingy into Dutch St. Maarten on Wednesday and went to Budget Marine. The place is huge but if you saw all of the yachts and Â"super yachtsÂ" here you would understand why. They had everything you could imagine. We walked out with a $6.00 plastic strainerÂ... We spent some of our spare time this week working on the boat, changing the Â"YÂ" valve on the head, replacing our cycle counter for the bilge pump and so on. Yesterday, we motored around the island to Tintamarre Island and spent the night. There are just 2 other boats here. The beach is great, turtles are swimming all around the boat and there are a ton of fish. It is just a couple of miles off Orient Beach where we were going to go today but you need good light going in to get around the reefs and it is overcast. You also need very light winds as it is on the east side of the island and open to the trade winds. The winds are very light today and forecast to stay that way. If the sun doesnÂ't come out soon we are going back to Marigot to provision and check out and plan on starting towards Antigua either Saturday or Sunday. We will provision here as it is MUCH cheaper than the BVIs or other islands as it is duty free. A case of coke in the BVI is about $20.00, beer is $24.00 or so. Shawnda is coming to Antigua on Wednesday to spend a week, we are looking forward to seeing her! I do not have WIFI here but I will be posting photos once I do.