St Maarten / St Martin
17 January 2011
Simpsons Bay Lagoon
1-17 Awake at 3:00 AM we decided to depart for St Marin. The wind had been blowing a good 18 knots for days so we decided to try sailing Jib only to reduce heeling, knowing we would still have some pretty good size seas out there. What a great sail we had! A beam reach all the way and averaged 6 knots. We arrived in St Martin just before the 11:00 bridge opening and anchored in Simpsons Bay Lagoon. We have quite a list of projects to accomplish while we are here and anticipate getting everything completed in two weeks.
We got a quote for the new cushion covers and again where shocked at the price quoted. We had already purchased the material in Trinidad. There is a VHF net every morning at 7:30 where you can ask for help in locating items or buy and sell. I found a used household sewing machine and now I can attempt to make the covers myself. There is a small canvas loft here that has said she will let us use her space to cut the panels out. Once that is done we should be able to sew them on the boat.
We took the bus to Phillipsburg, the cruise port, and spent the day watching sum burned tourists :) what fun! We have walked around Marigot on the French side and visited a few cruisers hangouts on the lagoon. Now it is time to get some items checked off our list.
1-23 The salt water pump needed to be rebuilt for the Perkins as it is beginning to leak, and a shop has been located withing walking distance. Our Co2 canisters need to be filled for our Soda Stream charger and we took the bus to the north side and dropped them off. We found a large warehouse grocery store and purchased as much as we could carry in our wagon, a second trip purchased beer and wine. Plywood has been procured for shelving in one locker. New jib sheet, spare impeller, LED lights, etc has been stored. Oh, and I found nice pillows. You just can't image how hard it is to find basic necessities on these islands.
1-26 Steve's daughter Aime is coming for a visit! She will fly into St Thomas the 3rd week of February. I think this is her first trip to the Caribbean so it should be exciting. We have ordered a few items to be shipped to her to bring down. The cost of supplies is outrageous in the Virgins so we will plan meals and provision before we leave here.
2-1 February 1st and we are still checking items off our list. We hope to head west by the weekend. Today we loaded up on groceries at Cost U Less in preperations of moving on!
2-12 OMG we finnally have our CO2 and head out to St John Tomorrow. We have everything we need and then some! I am most anxious to be in swimming and snorkeling again!
St Martin is a great stop to get boats worked on or buying marine parts but we are anchored in the lagoon with hundreds of other boats. This is not a favorite anchorage for us and we miss pretty harbors with sandy beaches, swimming, and snokeling. I can't wait to leave here, we stopped for 2 weeks about a month ago. I swear, you can not believe how hard it is to get things done on Island Time.