The sail from Antigua to Sint Maarten was a typical
Caribbean bump and bash. We got to the West end of St. Barthelemy (St. Barts)
and decided to stop for the night in Anse de Colombier. This secluded bay lies
at the bottom of steep craggy rocks. There is no access by road, only by boat
or by trekking over the hills on foot. Perfect for a quiet night! We swam and snorkelled had sun downers on deck
and retired to the sound of the waves lapping on the beach. The next morning we
sailed over to Sint Maarten.
Sint Maarten is a small island barely 7 miles across in each
direction. There are a multitude of beaches backed by rolling hills. The whole
island is duty free and it is one of the top holiday destinations in the Leeward.
The island is divided across the middle. The northern part is French; the
southern Dutch. The story; completely unsupported by historical fact; is that
the Dutch and French were too civilized to fight over the island. So they armed
a Frenchman with a bottle of wine and a Dutchman with a flask of gin. They were
to walk towards each other and where they met would become the boundary. The French ended up with a bit more because
the gin was stronger than the wine.
In the early days the island was important to the Dutch
because of the salt ponds in the southern half which is why they settled for
that half. St. Martin used to be a successful producer of tobacco and sugar;
when the sugar market declined they tried to stop the downward trend by making
the island completely duty-free. It worked! St. Martin became the Caribbean’s
number one shopping mall. Today it hosts about one million visitors annually!
We motored into Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten the next morning
to find our friends on Southern Blue moored there. It was their last few days
before they moved on to the B.V.I. It was lovely to see them and we all went
ashore to Buccaneers Bar for sun downers.
Our timing was great; we discovered it was a long weekend in
St. Maarten and the carnival was on. Tuesday we caught a bus into Philipsburg,
the capital of the Dutch side. The seafront side has a long boardwalk of
cobbled stones, fancy lampposts and potted palms. It has two main streets Front
Street and Back Street! Both lined with endless clothing, electrical and
jewellery stores all duty free, as well as souvenir shops and craft markets.
We had been told the carnival parade started at mid-day. In
true Caribbean fashion the first sign of anything happening was nearer to four
in the afternoon. The street was cordoned off and the parade began. What was
great; that we didn't see in Brazil, was the actual floats and costumes. If you
recall in Brazil, that is reserved for the rich and famous and costs mega
bucks. We just partied with the locals in “blocco’s”. Here in St. Maarten there
were about 10 floats with music and costumes. There didn't seem to be an overall theme
like in Martinique but they looked great and had obviously worked hard to make
it special.
Another couple we met who swam into our lives is Bonnie and
Patrick Lyons. They were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary
and staying at the Royal Hotel on the beach we were anchored off of. Patrick
swam by, saw our Cape Town sign on the boat and began chatting. Being the Water
polo coach for the USA Olympic team, treading water is a natural past time for
him. We didn’t, however leave them in the water and managed to convince them to
join us for a quick snorkel off of the nearby reef. It was fun but not much to
see and they accepted an invitation to sail with us to Cupecoy Beach, about an
hour’s sail from our anchorage. What a fantastic day, we snorkelled, walked on the
beach and swam. Then lunch aboard followed by a few Rum Punches, after that we
all spread out on the trampoline in the sun and slept the rum punch off before
sailing back to Simpson Bay. We so enjoyed meeting them and were sorry to see
them go at the end of the day. We hope to see them again!
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| Hand feeding the fish! |
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| See the fish among us? |
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| Patrick on watch |
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| Patrick and Bonnie Lyons. |
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| Thanks to the Lyons for the champers. Note the name! |
People we meet say we are brave to have undertaken the journey across the Atlantic; but this is what we think is “brave”.
Steve and Mags White on their Fountaine Pajot, 40 foot
Lavezzi; she is named “Madeleine” after their beautiful Grand-daughter. We anchored in front of them in Simpson Bay
and Steve called out a “Goeie More”! They are South Africans now settled in
Canada. According to Mags, they would sit in the holiday home in Bahamas each
year and Steve would “go on” about the yachts anchored in the bay. Finally they
decided to sell the holiday home and buy a floating one. This is after very
little, if any sailing experience. In fact Steve had done a 5 day skippers
course about 6 years before and had never again sailed until they took
ownership of and boarded Madeleine. If I recall correctly Mags had never
sailed. Now they spend their winter aboard in the warm Caribbean. That is
Brave!
We planned to explore the island after returning from Cupecoy and caught a bus to Orient Beach; the 2 mile long, white powdered sand beach is protected from the Atlantic waves by a reef. Orient Beach is the most developed, the most popular and the busiest beach on the island, probably the most famous beach in the entire Caribbean. The beach is reputed as much for its natural beauty and setting as it is for being the island´s foremost swimsuit optional beach. Most of the beach is the normal French topless option and the southern part is the nudist beach edged by “Club Orient” a ‘au natural’ resort. I was just talking about ‘brave’, brave is the HUGE (pardon the pun) range of figures that stroll confidently along the beach or wallow in the water. I admire their self-confidence to expose all, totally unconcerned. They even use the restaurant naked but there is a request on the wall to ‘please sit on a towel’ J
The next beach we visited by bus, Maho is the home of the
famous Sunset Beach Bar. The beach is situated at the end of the Princess
Juliana International Airport. The attractions are watching the aircraft come
in low over the sea touching down a short distance from the bar and the biggest
thrill is watching them take off. Well for us it was watching the people
“riding the jet stream” as the aircraft rev their engines for take-off. Some of
the guys stand right against the fence, holding on and as the jet stream hits
them they lift their legs and stream sideways hanging onto the fence. Those that choose to stand behind the
aircraft on the beach are blasted with sand and often tumbled along into the
water.
We had been a little wary of sailing to the French side
after the last 4 South African yachts being thrown out for lack of a visa.
Steve and Mags inspired us to take out chances and go visit. We lifted anchor
and sailed around to Grand Case Beach, in French called "Baie"
or "Plage de Grand Case", is a sweeping curve of a very pretty, one
mile long, white sandy beach with quite calm waters. The beach is awesome for
swimming and has some nice snorkelling spots towards either end of the beach,
or around the reef at "Créole Rock". We met Steve and Mags there and
joined them for a Rib dinner ashore.
Of course snorkelling was on the agenda
and we took the dinghy over to Creole Rock. We were privileged to see huge
spotted Manta Ray gliding by. I caused a bit of an underwater ‘traffic’
incident as I swam down alongside him. I hadn’t seen a poor old turtle chewing
thoughtfully on some coral and as I swam by watching the ray, he nearly jumped
out of his shell. He shot out past my left shoulder, not having noticed the ray
on my right and just about collided with the ray. They both got a huge fright
and ducked off at speed in different directions. I nearly drowned laughing.
I cannot get enough of being underwater. For me it is a
totally enchanting world full of the most incredible colours and creatures.
We returned to Simpson Bay for our flight to Tortola to
fetch Southern Blue and say goodbye to Tallies and Jeanne.
We had more than ten days before hauling rat catcher out of
the water and decided we were not going to spend it in St. Maarten. Our brief
overnight stop in St. Barts had tempted us and we decided to go there. See my
blog on our visit.
There was so much to do on the boat, unlike Trinidad; we
needed to remove everything that can be blown about from the deck, which
included sails. What a job, the most difficult part was trying to lay the sail
on deck to fold it up. Then there were some upgrades we needed one being the
davits that we use to lift the dinghy out of the water every night. It was
sitting too high and having an effect on the bimini so a move was required. We
found an excellent craftsman in Ral from FKG. He has done a beautiful job and
we would recommend him to anyone.
We were supposed to be lifted out of the water on the Monday
before we left, however when our time came there was a boat in the sling who
couldn’t get his rudder odd and they couldn’t set it down until the rudder was
off. We finally got our chance on the Wednesday which gave us only two days
before we flew out to Canada. What a rush!
The yard we are in is new and with the wind blowing the
sparkling clean boat we had scrubbed the past few days was very quickly covered
in dust. As it is so hot we couldn’t even close hatches so we were traipsing
dust and dirt into the boat as well as it blowing in and covering everything.
We will have quite a job getting it clean again when we get back after months
in the dusty environment. We don’t really want to wish for much rain as with it
come storms and winds.
Luckily Andre had booked us into a room at Lagoonies. Simple
but clean…ish; at least less dusty than the boat and an en suite loo. The
shower was downstairs but always a welcome relief after a day in the dust and
heat of the boat.
Some interesting cruising figures:
Diesel:-
From when we last fuelled
up in Trinidad on 11 December 2011 we used 320L of diesel. We ran the engines
for a total of 290hrs. That makes a consumption of about 1.1L per hour. That
was for motoring as well as charging for electricity. So you can see we are
sailors not motorers. J
Our budget:- Including everything except large upgrades
on the yacht works out to about 100US$ per day for this last season.
Distance We
covered about 1000nm this season after departing Trinidad in December.
8300 nm has passed under
Ratcatcher’s keels since we left Cape Town (15 371km for you landlubbers in the
metric world)
Beer XXXXXXX
(censored)
We hope you are enjoying our travels.
More to come after the hurricane season in Canada; with a mid trip turn in South Africa. We are looking forward to seeing our friends and families on our visit to South Africa which is our first visit since we left in Jan 2011.
