More of Sint Maarten/St Martin
Generator all good so one item ticked off the list of to dos. “Matilda” arrived and we paid Andreas and his crew a visit bearing a 6 pack as welcome. We had them as well as another Aussie (Mike) and his wife Isobel for morning tea the next day. We have to have a rigging report for the insurance and planned to have it done when we haul out in Cartagena, Colombia. Andy has put the wind up us about the reliability of the turnbuckles for the mast rigging so we are sourcing new ones to replace them. It will take a week for them to arrive so we have decided to be tourists again, this time taking a couple of buses to Grand Case on the north west of the island in the French area. This town has become famous for its food, ranging from the traditional Lolo creole to very up market French dining. We chose to eat at a Lolo. They are open barbeques over coals and irrespective of whether you order, ribs, chicken or seafood, it is accompanied by : coleslaw, potato, plantains (cooked banana) rice with red beans, spaghetti, macaroni, lettuce and tomato along with the hot, hot Caribbean sauces. We both had ribs washed down by a couple of Carib beers with lime. The setting for the Lolos is right on the beach and the classy places are in converted original houses in the main street. The weather wasn’t flash for photos but I took some anyway.
Our VHF radio decided to continue giving us the runaround jumping channels during conversations. Gary phone the Raymarine place in England to be told “maybe you need a new one”. So we have bitten yet another bullet and invested in a new one with a remote station for the cockpit. Gary is busy installing it at the moment.