18:01.94N 063:06.29W

We arrived on St Martin at about 8pm last night after a very slow and tedious sail of about 30 hours when it should have taken about 18.  Wind on the nose and waves and swell pushing us backwards so it was hard work and very uncomfortable.  We arrived after dark but we have been here before and anchored well off the shoreline so it wasn’t too difficult to do it by torch light! The winds are due to get stronger and stay from the same direction for the next few weeks so we are glad now that we opted to go when we did.  We head mainly south now so the winds will be from a good angle again.  We had a close encounter with Roman Ibramovich’s yacht Eclipse  who was pulling in at the same time.  Mike radioed across and it was clear that they were about to slow down and would be anchoring much further out than us so we didn’t need to change course or stop and wait for them.  Google Eclipse – she’s quite something.  We saw her in St Bart’s last year (picture is on the blog from that time) and were looking forward to having a closer look this morning but she had gone by the time we woke up.

There were 14 other superyachts to look at though and that is always fun.  One had a helicopter, sailing yacht, fully rigged and a car on board.  Standby for the photographs.

There is a strong possibility that we will buy a new dingy and take advantage of this being a duty free island.  Ours, which was very second hand when we bought it five years ago is very much on it’s last legs.  A bit falls off every time we launch it; the large repair is beginning to fail, the rowlocks are peeling off and it leaks air so needs reinflating regularly.  I tried to persuade Sunsail in the Virgin Islands to sell us one of theirs but they only had 12 ft ones available which is far too big for us.

All for now.