We spent about 10 days anchored in Marigot bay, the island has not really recovered from Irma – the Dutch side seems to be doing better than the French side - maybe because of more financial support from Holland or because the cruise ships go into Philipsburg bringing money to the Dutch side? Both sides have a long way to go to be fully functional again, hotels are destroyed and many building still don't have roofs etc.

The lagoon is littered with damaged, dismasted, sunken, beached and refloated boats as are the boatyards.

 

These are 2 boat which have been refloated  on the Dutch side, one was once an Amel!

      

                                      

 

 

THere are a lot of properties still without roofs etc.

 

We took the dinghy through the lagoon a few times over to the Dutch side to visit the chandleries and the shop where we got our bottles tested – they were well overdue, to have a meal ashore and try typical Dutch food with Rik and Sanne.

On the French side the supermarkets are well stocked and its a good place to provision before heading to Los Roques or Bonaire ( which we understand is more expensive) the French side used both Euro and US$ which many shops accept as equal currency 1Eruo=1US$, therefore paying in US$ was beneficial to us as its worth less than the Euro:£. We made quite a few visits to the SuperU to stocked up with enough food, beer and soft drinks to last us quite while although we will run out of fresh fruit and veg after a couple of weeks.

We took a couple of buses over to Philipsburg, we haven't visited before and wanted to see some of the island on route, to be honest there wasn't much in Philipsburg, they have daily cruise ships at the moment so its quite touristy with lots of stalls selling the same clothes, hats and bags, we didn't stay very long!