18:01.99N 63:05.14W

Friday & Saturday, 24^th & 25^th Feb.

On Friday morning we took the opportunity to visit the French side of the lagoon before we moved in the opposite direction to Lagoon Marina where we were sort of booked in.   Our first impression of the French side of the island was it was distinctly tatty in comparison with the Dutch side.   We found a dinghy dock to moor to, alongside three burly policemen and a furious Frenchman sizing up to what appeared to be one of the shop owners.   This went on for some time while we scrabbled around their feet securing the dinghy!   Rob was appalled to find that there appeared to be wall to wall bikini shops, all of which had to be visited, but since the lowest price seemed to be €70 he was fairly safe.

We found the tourist office complete with an art display and armed with their map, set off to the US Supermarket described in gushing terms in Doyles pilot book.   As ever we weren’t in quite the right area and they are digging up all the roads, so it was a somewhat precarious walk to a supermarket that didn’t quite live up to the hype.  So Rob, after an interminable wait bought us some nice French cheese and pate and we walked all the way back for a coffee by the dingy dock.   Here we found a lovely waitress who talked us into a delicious warm chocolate cake and ice cream (between us I hasten to add) – one to add to the book, Chris!   After that we found the more salubrious dress shop area and a lovely art gallery – the Giclee prices started at €500…. And Rob was feeling in need of a good sit down.

Rob is going to insert his latest French rant here!: I have been meaning to say a few words for quite a while on this subject, but as Sarah has been doing such a wonderful job writing this log, I have not had an opportunity. We have stayed in several French Islands again this year and it never ceases to amaze me how a nation that prides itself on being chic, cool and stylish can have so little understanding of how basic sanitary plumbing works! In Guadeloupe the sewers ran straight into the marina in Point a Pitre , making a very expensive location close to unbearable, and we were only walking past. Toilets everywhere on these islands seem to be damaged, missing or simply ignored by cleaners – even the high class supermarkets in Martinique had rest rooms that fell a long way short of any standards of health or hygiene. Is it really so hard to put in plumbing that can cope with normal waste?

On our return to Serafina we rang up the marina (they don’t seem to use a VHF channel) to confirm that the previous incumbent of the berth had left, but there was some confusion so we were asked to ring back later.   Meanwhile I got the hoped for, all important photo of a Jumbo jet taking off…   In the event, it transpired that the boats had all done a shuffle allowing us to go straight to the second berth allocated and stay there all week.   So we lifted the dinghy as it sounded that it might be a rather close manoeuvre and we didn’t need a painter in the water as an added distraction.

And how right we were.   The lagoon gets incredibly shallow the further south you go, with a maze of red and green buoys marking the hazards – but we had already been informed that at least two reds had moved completely out of position!  Thank goodness for the forward looking sonar, as it was very difficult to discern any channels.   Finally Rob successfully got us to the marina where weirdly there was a red buoy positioned inside of the hammerhead pontoon.   He tried approaching it from either side as I telephoned the office administrator who may not be a boater as she didn’t seem to be able to answer the question of “look out the window, we are aground – which way shall we try now?”   Luckily a man stuck his head out of his engine room and informed us that we had to “go right the way into the shallows and then swing back out along the bows of the boats already moored, stick tightly to the very edge of the boats on the hammerhead and spin very snugly around the end into our berth just inside of the hammerhead;  and oh by the way it is really shallow there, I expect you will go aground”!!

Poor Rob looked fairly horrified, not helped by the fact that we had a gusty 18 knots plus across the boat but he did a totally textbook approach and squeezed backwards into the slot, with lots of enthusiastic helpers from the shore.   Big sigh of relief.

We then discovered we were moored alongside a 30 year old Amel newly purchased by Nezih, a Turk who was on the same EMYR rally as us in 2010!  He regaled us with stories about the price of boat work out here – not really what we wanted to hear, but we set off to look at the two big competing chandleries and assess where we might get the better discounts, as well as the duty free prices.   By this time it was quite late so we came back and had supper on board.

We attempted to take part in the OCC net on the SSB radio, but still had no luck;  so Rob asked the St Maarten boaters’ net for a recommendation for another radio engineer.   We have now contacted Owen on ‘Magic’ who will come and have a look in a week’s time as his wife is due out for a week any minute! 

We didn’t launch the dinghy as we felt a healthy walk would do us good, so we set off to see the other suppliers, supermarkets and shops we had earmarked from Doyles.   We discovered that all roads on Sint Maarten/St Martin are being re-built/in a state of disrepair;  there are no pavements but lots of mad drivers and nobody else seems to walk, but sit in cars often in traffic jams.   And there are lots of mangy dogs around – cats or dogs have been in short supply up till now.   We will definitely be launching the dinghy however awkward it proves to be (we are close up against the dock and the next door boat) as it is the only way to travel around the lagoon – the roads involve quite big detours around the water.

Our copy of Doyles is dated 2009 and we are finding that things move on out here very quickly, so many of the people we want to see have moved/gone out of business and in one sad case, died.  So we end up doing extra yardage finding all this out.   Successes include two great supermarkets, finding the cinema which will be a first for six months, an unbelievable patisserie (a good enough reason alone to launch the dinghy for easy access) and we collected our new Wirie (WiFi aerial system)from Hyacinth at the Business Centre.   We had the Wirie sent to Hyacinth as a holding address and she has been exemplary in her handling of it all, and is such a nice person – we can’t recommend her enough.   She also laminated two sheets detailing disposal of oil waste and garbage that we have to display – these are some of the myriad of requirements by the US Coastguard for our entry into the US.  We also visited Harvin who may be able to do our gas cage at a far better price than quoted by anyone else. But on the way back, we were passing a bar when Rob spotted a sign saying that they would be showing the Wales v England Rugby live and since it was only 2 minutes past kick-off…… well we could hardly walk past and ignore it. Found ourselves in a big bar with 7 screens of varying sizes and just one other customer. His crisp new Welsh jersey was a bit of clue as to how noisy this was going to get. Sadly his lot sneaked it and Rob has been left to wonder how far you have to travel to get to watch a game without a Welshman showing up when they win. And how come you can never find one when they lose?

But we are still searching for a canvas maker for quite a few little jobs we need doing, a well-priced hairdresser (we are in super-yacht land after all!) and someone to take a look at our vacuum packer which has given up the ghost.

We did a proper price comparison at the chandleries, again both of them offered lots of help, and arrived back for lunch at 1500.   Rob unpacked his lovely deep red Wirie and started looking at doing the update which we have just been notified is required (oh the Americans are a wonderful lot when it comes to customer service), and how he will secure it.   We had also expected Harvin to arrive to look at the welding job but the heavens opened at quite the wrong time!

We managed to contact our youngest son Ewan via Skype and had a long chat with him and he was also able to confirm that Tom had arrived safely in Perth, WA.