Xmas Mugs & Happy New Year!!

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 1 Jan 2012 16:52
Happy New Year from Marigot!!
We celebrated the end of the old year and the start of the new in fine style last night here in Marigot. The end of the old year is celebrated here almost as much as the start of the new! Some friends came over to the boat for drinks first, Glenn and Aaron from Sylvia, as well as Angie and David from Hurah who we originally met in Barbados last March - it seems strange writing last year, and a couple they know who are originally from Sweden but who now live here on the island. We had dinner at our favourite French brasserie and then watched the fireworks from the bar.
This week has been fairly quiet, and although we have been busy, it has been mostly boat jobs as St Martin is about the best place in the Caribbean to get jobs done and more importantly stock up on spares. We have made many trips to the chandlers and done several jobs we have been putting off, such as servicing the generator and the checking & servicing all the lifejackets. We now also have fully functioning wifi on the boat, thanks to chance encounter on the dock with a chap who came and fixed us up with a new booster and the facility to create our own boat-wide wifi network - marvellous!!
Yesterday, we climbed up to Fort Louis, which was used by the French to defend the island from the marauding English - the view from there is amazing, you can se all the way across the lagoon to the Dutch side and even as far as Simpson Bay where we were anchored for the first week.

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The view from the top, over the Lagoon and out to Simpson Bay

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Tomorrow we will slip the lines and head for Anguilla. The island is about 5 miles from here, but we can only anchor on the northern side so it will about 10 or 12 miles in total. Every island is so close over here that a long day sailing is only about 30 miles, and as we only sail about once every week or 10 days at the moment, we are almost out of practice!! The trip to the BVI's will be longer but still only about 60 miles or so. When we leave next year to go to Bermuda, which is about 4 or 5 days away, it will be a real shock to the system!!
We are still getting fairly high winds and swells which are having a real effect on our plans. While we will go to Anguilla, our trip there may well be cut short as by Thursday we will have northerly swells which will almost certainly make the anchorage at least uncomfortable, if not worse. As we get towards the end of January and into February and March the swells should subside as should the winds but until then we will be choosing our anchorages carefully. Once in the BVI's the weather will be less of an issue as most of the sailing is in a channel between the islands.
Anyway, important stuff, Xmas mugs!! Santa managed to find us again this year, and left John and I a new mug each for our morning cup of tea - can you guess which mugs belongs to who?? John also got a matching coaster for his - lucky man!!

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