Simpson Bay Lagoon, St Maarten Position: 18:02.317N 62:05.606W
SeaTrek
Bill and Judy Stellin
Sun 6 Apr 2008 20:08
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The bottom is painted, hull waxed and Jaywalker looks
fantastic. The guys in the yard did a good job, however, as with anywhere
here in the Caribbean, one must supervise every second the work is being
done. Luckily, the yard manager is a white guy who knows how to get his
guys working. Even still, about four hours of actual work is ever done by
anyone in an eight hour day. These people have one speed....slow bordering
on stop.
Hustle is an unknown word and concept.
We went back out on anchor in the bay outside of
Philipsburg, where the boat yard is and stayed one more night. The rolling
became unbearable so we've moved into Simpson Bay Lagoon, a land locked large
body of very shallow water that has two small canals with bridges over them, as
entrances. One is on the French side and the other, the one we used, is on
the Dutch side.
After one day in here, I wish we'd stayed outside where we
were.
The Dutch entrance is the closest to Philipsburg and here
you must go see the Port Authority and pay a fee to anchor either in the Lagoon
or even outside, plus pay a bridge opening fee. For us it came to a
whopping $56 USD. Just for the dubious privilege of anchoring and
entering. The water is pee green (not misspelled) and only about eight
feet deep.
 After entering, we decided to go to the French side of the
Lagoon because we had heard the water was a little cleaner. On the way, in
a marked, dredged channel, we went aground and had to be towed out of the sticky
soft mud.
We turned around and finally anchored about half way
across the bay and dinghyed into Marigot the little tourist town on the French
side.
Dinghying anywhere these past several months has been a
real trial because of the winds and wave chop. We get soaked every time we
get into the blamed thing.
We didn't want to be half way to anywhere, so we upped
anchor and moved to the Dutch side where we promptly ran aground again.
This time we were about 15 feet out of the channel which should have been marked
except all the red buoys were missing.
We got the Danforth anchor out to kedge our way off the
bottom, had it in the Dinghy with line to pay out, when we noticed we had bumped
up against a green buoy and were now adrift.
I had the dinghy motor started, just left it as is, jumped
back on board Jaywalker, started the engine and stopped our drift literally
inches away from the bow mooring line of a mega yacht. All the time it was
blowing about 30 knots and raining. Which by the way it has done everyday
since half way across the Atlantic. I probably told you that already, but
it bears repeating, because it is one of the several reasons, I will never
come back to this part of the world.
 Above is our wind instrument showing winds of 33 knots
while at rest at anchor, apparent and true wind speeds are the same when you are
not moving.
We finally got anchored and noticed some friends of ours,
Frank and Tari, on Vision, anchored nearby. We dinghyed over and
visited wherein they told us of a good internet bar/cafe with free wifi and a
laundry.
Today we went to the place and ran into another guy we met
in St Lucia who was lamenting the fact that he and about 15 other cruisers had
just discoved their Cash debit card numbers had been stolen in
Antigua, English Harbor and now they were out thousands of dollars. I
immediately went on line and sure enough, we too have been victimized to the
tune of $2010 USD. We all used the only ATM in the harbor which someone
had compromised so as to get access to card numbers as well as pin's. We
were in Antigua over a month ago, and the fraudulent transactions were occurring
while we were talking about it, today. All of mine were withdrawals in NY
city over the past two days.
After a frantic call to Schwab Bank, the card was
cancelled and I am pretty sure the money will be replaced. I still have my
card, I didn't lose it and it wasn't stolen so there is nothing I could have
done to prevent this from occurring, save having never come to this godforsaken
area.
What a series of coincidences lead us
to finding out what was happening.
It was pure chance we ran into Frank and Tari. It
was equally pure chance they told us of this particular bar with wifi, and
it was further pure chance we ran into someone we knew, who told us
of the scam.
In all our years in Europe, we were never robbed nor had
anything stolen and were seldom short changed. When it did occur it was an
honest mistake that was apologetically rectified by almost mortified shop or
restaurant people. Here, about every day there is an occasion of short
changing or overcharging. I think I have caught all of them but who
knows.
I don't think I can offer any advice to people coming here
about protecting person and property. The scams are too numerous. In
every tourist office, immigration and customs office or other public place,
there are big notices warning visitors about unscrupulous taxi and tour
operators. The warnings go on about being overcharged, being robbed, not going
out alone at night, always walking in well lit places in a
big group, etc, etc. It is sickening to realize what suckers we
white tourist are and how we are at the mercy of the local bad guys. The police
are worthless as are the incompetent public officials. They do know
however, how to extract every cent they can from tourists. There is a fee
to check in, check out, anchor, harbor dues, navigation light dues, custom fees,
etc,etc.
Believe me, you who go on cruise ship tours never see
what we do. You are back on board by 5PM and safely eating a
shipboard dinner by 8.
We ate out in an Indian restaurant in Philipsburg and saw
with our own eyes a woman, nicely dressed and well made up, order a meal, eat
it, order a second main course and skip leaving the owner shaking his
head. Seems being a cheat runs both ways.
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