White Sand Beaches & Overnight Sailing to SXM

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Geo: 18.6671, -64.325

Unlike the rest of the Eastern Caribbean, Anegada is a low lying island, only 28 feet above sea level at it's highest point, which reminded us so much of the Bahamas. (And for the record, we still miss the Bahamas and talk about returning there in the future.) There are only about 300 people living on this island, which makes it much more "our style" - save for the bazillion charter boats. We stayed for a few days, anchored on the south side, but enjoying the beautiful, quiet beaches on the north side of the island. Despite all the charter boats, few people take the time to go to the north side. After beaching it, and getting our fill of soft white sand, we enjoyed a meal ashore and then prepared to make our move to Sint. Maartin. An overnight sail, got us there, with only a couple of 'bumps and bruises' along the way. Read on...

Excited for our first overnight sail of this season, we set out around 3pm. It was the first time that we had reefed the main sail EVER. We also had the foresail reefed. The northern swell made this trip very lumpy, despite the wind being in our favour. I got sick after a couple of hours and took medication that knocked me out. Tony was therefore single-handing. Under the cover of darkness we hit a big wave and a loud bang had us scurrying to figure out what had broken. It took us a while to figure out, but when I said to Tony that the foresail was luffing a short while later, we knew immediately that the furling line had snapped, letting out the entire foresail.

Fortunately the wind died down a bit, so running with the full foresail was doable. But upon arrival in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten, we had to drop the sail onto the deck and then make our way around it to drop the anchor. Not such an easy task with a 140% sail on the deck (That's a lotta sail!), and while we were both exhausted from the 18 hour sail.

So I got sick for the first time in our third year of cruising. And Tony is my single handing hero. But neither of those things have anything to do with Anegada. It's a really beautiful spot.

You can read up on Anegada yourself here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anegada

And this is the wonderful resort that we visited for the day: http://anegadabeachclub.com

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