Sint Maarten/Saint Martin - take two

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Geo: 18.0344, -63.0927

Here are all the pictures I missed in the first round of SXM pics.

There are some bday pics, and various ones from touring the island.

March 15th, 2016 - SXM and Birthday pictures

Hello all,

Again, I had best apologize upfront for my silence / tardiness in writing. We've received several "Where are you?" emails and I certainly do not mean to cause anyone any worry. We've been simply enjoying ourselves and taking our sweet time, as usual. It works for us and we are still loving every moment that we can be out here living our dream.

First, let me say a huge THANK YOU to those of you who joined us for Tony's birthday. Eleven Torontonians flew in, and another 14 cruisers either sailed in, or met us here to take part in the festivities and make Tony's party a real success.

Unfortunately, I had caught a bug when we first arrived in St. Maarten, and struggled to keep myself going up to the day of the party. With our EYC friends here, I wanted so badly to participate in all the fun and enjoy the week, but immediately after the party I was down for the count with laryngitis and didn't get out of bed for the next three days. And if that wasn't bad enough, I lost my voice for a full seven days. (Devastating to the Gemini in me who loves to communicate!)

My dear friend Holly from s/v Shangri La (met in TCI last year)was a savior to me and swooped in from behind the scenes to help me with the party. Feeling as lousy as I did, I couldn't have done it with out her. And as thanks, I managed to give her my cold. (My deepest apologies, Snorkel Buddy!)

Thank you as well for all the birthday wishes that were sent from those of you back home. I think it's safe to say that Tony truly did have a wonderful birthday and felt the love. We are so very lucky to have such good people in our lives.

Here are the birthday party pictures: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/inspiration38/1/1456153104/tpod.html

Mike and Hilda (from EYC) were here a couple of weeks before we arrived, and left shortly after Tony's birthday. Before they left to sail further down island, Hilda kindly sewed a quick repair to our sail cover, and Michael came over one morning to give Tony a hand with our Honda Generator. With new spark plugs (birthday present from Darren and Jimmy), and now a clean carburetor, it started on the first pull! Success!

Our new Danish cruising friends, Ole and Jette on s/v Lahaina (whom we had met in Culebra this year) anchored next to us in the Lagoon for a week while Ole had to fly to NYC for business. We kept Jette under our wing during that time, having her over for dinner and taking her to shore for groceries, etc. Upon Ole's return we had a lovely dinner on shore. They were off a few days later as they have to haul out a month earlier than we do, but we will see them further down island and again when we start next season together in Grenada.

In our usual fashion, we've stayed in Sint Maarten WAY longer than planned. After the birthday week was over, we ended up spending quite a bit of time with our friends Sandy and Michael (from EYC) who had rented a villa for their three week stay. As they've been to SXM several times, they took us on a tour of the island. I fell in love with the towns of Marigot and Grand Case on the French side. We also returned to Grand Case for their Tuesday Night Street Festival where they have music, vendors and tons of good food. Sandy and Michael are interested in the cruising lifestyle and for that reason I invited Sandy to come to a ladies luncheon with Holly and I, so that she could mingle and chat with some more cruising ladies. It turned out that of the 35 women there, more than 20 of us were Canadians. We had Sandy and Michael to the boat for a pressure cooker dinner. (That's a meal in ONE pot. The dishwasher in me is always grateful for this.) At the end of the night, they got soaked on the dinghy ride back to shore and did nothing other than laugh. And at the end of their three weeks, they not only lent us their rental car to do a big provisioning run, but generously gave us all of their leftover supplies and food from the villa. Sandy, Michael, we greatly enjoyed all the time we spent with you and the friendship that we have. You guys are total troopers and have the perfect attitude to be great future cruisers!

One thing I had never considered was how difficult it could possibly be to find a Laundromat. Sint Maarten, being built up and commercial, would seem like an easy place to find everything you need, right? Well, it turns out that the Laundromats here are all drop-off services. You can't do your own laundry. Someone does it for you – for a price. In our first week here, thankfully, our friend Keith, (from EYC, who has a time share in Maho for 2 months every year) gave us access to the laundry room in his building. Once he left though, we were stuck using the laundry service. I had three loads that would normally have cost me between $1.50 and $4.00 per load. So most of the time we pay $9 to $24 when I wash and dry the clothes myself. Here, they charge you by weight. My three loads weighed 27 pounds, which cost us a whopping $37, and ever so kindly returned a ripped tank top strap, and the most horrendous folding I've ever seen. The only positive thing was that our clean clothes were placed into clear plastic bags to avoid saltwater spray during the dinghy ride back to the boat. Since then, I've been collecting rainwater and doing our laundry by hand, a little bit at a time.

Speaking of rain….Boy! We've had our share in the past two weeks! Most of the time, it's just a passing shower…sometimes we are even lucky enough that it's a sun shower with spectacular rainbows…but lately it's been soggy, full days of cold rain. (At least we are both shower fresh, and I'm one up on the laundry war!)

Just when we thought we had been here for long enough, it was the start of the Heineken Regatta. In case you haven't heard of it, it's one of the biggest and most well known regattas in the Caribbean. Normally, we'd avoid a crowd, but we heard numerous times that THIS was the regatta to stick around for…so we did.

Naturally, we made our way to the Sint Maarten Yacht Club and offered our services, knowing that the regatta is run with the help of hundreds of volunteers. We were told that all positions had been filled, which is what we had expected. So I wrote my name down on a piece of paper and handed it to the girl in charge, with a quick mention that if they need anyone at the last minute, we're available. I also told her that we'd stop by in the morning to see if they had any no-shows or drop-outs. As it turned out, we ended up on the Water Taxi team, and worked every day (4 days) of the regatta…twice we even worked double shifts. Tony and I both worked each of the available positions, but in the end, I became the evening Dock Master and Tony rotated between being on the dock with me, and driving one of the water taxis. We both became shift leaders. We had a ton of fun and met lots of great people. We even bumped into an EYC member who had chartered a boat for the week to be in the Regatta. Once again, it's a small world after all!

Next stop? A twelve mile sail to St. Barth's to visit our dear friends Craig and Christa from s/v Simunye. They joined us for Tony's birthday, but a few hours wasn't nearly enough time to catch up!

On to the next adventure!

Sending love and kisses from the Inspiration Crew.

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