Chilling in St Maarten

I poked my head up through the companionway bright and early the next morning to find Maximillian bobbing gently on her mooring and blue skies above.  It can be disorienting arriving somewhere at night time but it’s almost worth it for the surprise of your location when the daylight comes.  Simpson Bay is a large lagoon almost completely encircled by land with the exception of a French bridge and a Dutch bridge which allow ingoing and outgoing traffic to pass three times a day.  Apparently when Dad was here previously, the bay was very quiet, but now scores of yachts populate the moorings all around us.  The mooring we are on, very kindly lent to us by a friend who is in Grenada with his yacht at the moment, is close to a small peninsula in the bay called Mount Fortune.  I hesitate to mention it here, but the locals call it the Witch’s Tit.  Nice.

Being moored out in the bay we need to use the dinghy to get ashore.  We have a new dinghy – Dad put his foot through the boards that made up the base of the previous dinghy, it had clearly seen better days.  And the new dinghy is a very nice too – aluminium base, 9ft in length, extendable oars neatly stashed in the interior, immaculate.  Dinghies are almost permanently zipping around the bay here, in fact some zip too fast without lights and there have sadly been a couple of night time fatalities recently.  So with great expectation I sat in the dinghy on that first morning as Dad pulled the starter cord on the outboard.  Rrrrrrrrrrrr went the little 4hp engine and puttered forward at a most sedate pace.  Tee hee J  It takes us about 20mins to get between the marina and Maximillian with the little 4hp outboard we have.  Not that I’m complaining mind you, so much of life is spent rushing from A to B, being late and trying to save minutes and here is an incredibly pleasant way to spend 20mins.  I’m quite a fan of our little 4hp.  Or I was until about 10mins into the journey Dad pointed out the main channel into the bay through which all the marine traffic travels for the Dutch side.  Rrrrrrrrr put put put went the outboard and then stopped altogether leaving us stranded in the entry channel!  I’ve learned that it’ll do that from time to time and with one exception it always starts again with a little coaxing.  Remember those extendable oars I mentioned earlier?  Well they’re not terribly efficient in a windy harbour, we owe Sheer Tenacity a beer for giving us a tow!

Simpson Bay Marina is chock full of super yachts.  Millions upon millions of pounds’ worth of yachts stacked up, all very shiny and very big, saddled with grand names like Limitless, Gladiator or Idol.  Although there is one that’s more frivolously named ‘Cocktails’ and it has twin jet skis tethered to its stern – Shaken and Stirred!  The super yachts are very impressive (if sadly lacking in the sail department ) but still somehow a little lonely.  Several have their professional crews buzzing industriously around on them cleaning and polishing, we’ve seen two move since we’ve been here, but the rest remain immaculate and silent in their berths.

 

Each morning at 7.30am we listen to ‘the Net’ over the VHF which is hosted by a colourful local character called Mike.  It’s for cruisers in St Maarten and starts with a weather report, invites new arrivals to introduce themselves and welcomes them, people call in with items for sale or things they are looking for and then there are notices of any parties or points of interest.  It’s really nice and eccentric and also pointed us in the direction of a good happy hour on Thursday at Turtle Pier, one $2 cocktail & I was nearly falling off my bar stool!  The rest of the day is spent pottering around doing little jobs, shopping for stores, visiting the chandlery, lots of reading and making the big decisions like whether to have lunch or dinner ashore.  We’re alongside now and it makes life a bit easier with hot showers, shore power and only a 3 minute walk to the restaurants and supermarket.

Tristan and Sarah arrive tomorrow which is very exciting and then we’re looking to leave St Maarten on Sunday.  We’re planning to get the 4.30pm bridge and sail overnight to Tortola.