We Made it! St. Martin 3-16

The forecast held, the waves were down and the wind was light and from the south, allowing us to motor sail just off the wind at about 6 knots for most of the night without pushing hard. Before dark we watched several schools of flying fish soaring all around the boat – very amusing. We made the trip in about 13 hours, getting to Marigot just before dawn, and circling in the deep water for about 1/2 an hour before going in to anchor. I’m a little tired, only napping for a about an hour and a half. A long shower helped, but soon its hot (still no breeze) and we are all in the water for a swim while we wait for immigrations to open at 9:30. We have our yellow ‘Q’  flag hoisted, meaning we have entered but not cleared in, and we must stay on the boat. (or in our case near the boat).

Clear in goes smoothly, even though we have to pay $50 for the privilege of anchoring in the bay. In hindsight the guy gave me a couple of chances to tell him that we would anchor somewhere else, almost hinting that it wouldn’t matter if we then stayed in the bay. Well no sleep had the brain working slow, so I said no, we feel like staying.

We check out the market area around the docks, but its very disappointing. (not to mention freaking hot and still!!)    Once in the dinghy, we head under the bridge into Simpson Lagoon. Here we find the St. Martin that the yachties speak so highly of. Lots of boat supply and repair yards and nice water front with shops and restaurants. We will be back to check these out after a cool down swim at the boat.

The afternoon ends up being pretty lazy. I make one more trip in to check out the boat supply store and supermarket. The boat store doesn’t have much other than $13 electrical tape ( I thought things were supposed to be cheaper in St. Martin. Just cheap watches by the cruise ship docks, I guess), but the supermarket is well stocked.  I manage to score the pans we have been searching for since Trellis Bay and some swim noodles so we don’t have to listen to the kids argue about who’s turn it is with the one that was on the boat.  (now we just hear them argue about which color they get)

The evening is capped off by another family monopoly game and an early nights sleep after the long passage.  We noticed that around sunset the bay cleared out and there are now only a fraction of the boats in the bay. Not sure if this is due to the $50 fee or if they were all here to start an offshore passage. This is the only place to clear in/out of the French side of the island so apparently it gets a lot of traffic.