Movin' on Down the Chain

St. Martin was certainly a beautiful island but just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, we're imagining. We spent one night anchored in the main harbor at Marigot, then decided to move to something a bit more remote.

At Marigot, we explored the main town on the French side, mostly touristy spots and fancy shops offering jewelry and duty free stuff. The entire island of St. Martin (French side)/Sint Maarten (Dutch side) is duty free so there may be some bargains to be had. I say "may be" because the old saying goes "duty free does not mean profit free." We found that to be true in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI and expected the same to be true in St. Martin. We did find a delightful authentic French Bakery near the dingy dock which we enjoyed two mornings for fresh bread and pastry breakfasts. What a treat!

The first day after our arrival, we took the local bus to the Dutch side (Sint Maarten) with David and Vicky so David could check out some camera at the duty free places. We wandered around there all afternoon and did the typical touristy shopping thing, getting it completely out of our system.

That night, we enjoyed a quiet dinner in Marigot at a sidewalk café. The next day was Carnival day on the Dutch side so the party was on! We had experienced this at Junkanoo in Nassau so we opted out but our friends David/Vicky, Jake/Carol, and Richard/Leila decided to go to the parade and get into the festivities. It seems we made the right decision to not go as they were all a bit "under the weather" the next morning. Sounded lie they had a grand time from the reports, however.

The next morning we decided that the anchorage at Marigot, although pleasant, was a bit too crowded for us Allergic to City types and moved to a quieter anchorage a bit up the coast. We found a beautiful anchorage at Grand Case just an hour up the coast and found it to be quiet, yet offered a variety of shops and restaurants to review.. We actually took the local bus up to the beach town earlier in the morning to check it out before we moved the boat and after exploring the little village, we found it to be "just our style". We moved the boat up there in the afternoon and had a lovely quiet evening alone in a very pretty bay with few other boats. We found a neat bar with live jazz (two guitarists) who were quite good and enjoyed them for a couple of hours before wandering off down the street to another establishment where we found a French band trying to play American rock and roll, It was very comical because event though they were pretty fair musically, they were missing the basic rock and roll "feel".
Plus, they probably didn't understand the lyrics they were singing either. So it was more comedy show for us but the local French kids thought they might as well have been the Beatles!

They next night we were joined by Richard and Leila and David and Vicky in the anchorage. They had also finally had enough of Marigot harbor and sought out something less congested. We spent the day lounging on the beach and relaxing together, catching up on their partying at the Carnival event. Sounded very familiar to the Junkanoo in Nassau.

The next morning we decidd it was time to move out and head to our next destination, the beautiful French speaking island of Saint Barthelemy (St. Bart's). This island is notorious as a home to the rich and famous and their prices reflected that to us in no time. As most of the islands we have visited have been inhabited by dark skinned locals (either Spanish or African descent), this island was noticeably white. The shops were all very upscale (i.e.. Cartier, Dior, etc.) and all duty free. It was certainly THE place to be if one wished to buy a fancy watch or jewelry. We both thought how much fun our daughter Amy would have enjoyed the shopping, even if it were only of the "window" shopping variety.

We did a little wandering about the main drag until cocktail time and stopped into a local pub for "happy hour". Turned out that the place was purported to be the bar where Jimmy Buffett wrote the song "Cheeseburger in Paradise." We had been told he had once owned a bar on the island but later found out that it was this place that he used to frequent while anchoring off shore. The beers were $5 each (even at happy hour!) so we didn't last long there. We returned to our boat for the night after wandering through the local grocery store. The store had everything you might imagine the upscale yachties might need from fine Russian caviar to cases of Dom Perignon champagne. We bought a jar of jelly which looked good and headed off to the boat.

The next morning David and Vicky and us headed to the tiny island of Saba. We had a terrific downwind sail and really enjoyed letting the boat stretch out across the big rollers. We actually saw the knotmeter hit 9.6kts, a new speed record for us. Saba is a spectacular volcanic island rising straight up out of the sea, with steep cliffs all around. The original access was via 1000 steps carved into the cliff up to the little town at the top of the island. In recent years the locals have developed a more moderate access via another point on the island but our anchorage was too rolly for us to even attempt to get our dingies ashore, so we stayed on our boats for the night and decided to move on in the morning light.

We awoke around 5am as the sun was beginning to shine and after bouncing around for about an hour decided that we had had enough and headed off toward the island of Saint Christopher (St. Kitts), with a possible stop over at Saint Eustatius (Statia) if the wind direction was favor table. It5 wasn't so we continued on to St. Kitts and after a long day of motor sailing, we arrived at anchorage around 5pm, pretty exhausted from the waves and windy day on the sea.

St.Kitts is an autonomous island originally part of the French, then British protectorates. The people of the island are extremely proud of their island and go out of their way to help you find your way around and make you feel welcome. We Reunited with our friends from Offline, here and the 6 of us hired a local taxi lady to give us a tour of the island. It took us all day as she proudly showed us the entire island including some of the native plants, fruits and vegetables. We especially enjoyed touring the fort which is under reconstruction. After having visited several old Spanish forts on the trip we all thought we had probably seen enough forts for a lifetime, but this one was so interesting and special we all remarked at how glad we were to have toured it.

We returned back to town in time for happy hour and enjoyed a couple of coldies together before independently returning to our boats for the night. In a while we will weigh (pull up) our anchors and head off to the neighboring island of Nevis. It is a small island which is part of St. Kitts government. We plan on staying there for one night, then head off to Montserrat, the recently active volcanic island just to the south. Volcanologists are predicting another major spew in the very near future (Days? Weeks? Months?) so we will be on the lookout for any activity which might be of concern. The government has a 3 mile proximity limit to the dome side of the island so we'll have to go the other way to get near land. We likely won't stay there too long before heading off to Antigua, then to Guadeloupe, one of the larger islands in the chain.

So as you can see, we've got lots of ground to cover in the near future and need to keep moving if we wish to meet our deadline of July 1 to be out of the hurricane zone and keep our insurance policiy in effect. At present our plan is to put our boat on the hard (up on land) for the summer hurricane season in Venezuela, then return to Steamboat Springs for July through October, then come back down and head off again next winter. But the question then becomes: "to where?". Stay tuned.