Marigot Bay, St Martin

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sat 3 Mar 2012 01:01

18:04.08N 63:05.55W

 

Wed night & Thursday – 29th Feb & 1st May

 

Settled down in the evening waiting for Jo to arrive and were a bit stunned when we heard her voice out on the quay a full hour before she was even due to land on the island.  Seems she was offered a place on an earlier direct flight from Antigua and so she snapped it up.

 

Her and Sarah immediately began what is likely to be a 7 day talkathon and so I settled down with a fixed (hopefully) interested looking _expression_ and offered to take back writing the log for the week.

 

Thursday dawned a bit overcast and really quite windy which was not quite what we had hoped as we had got to get Serafina out of her berth in the ‘marina’ and a strong cross wind was just one of the many hazards we could have done without. I took the dinghy over to Customs and Immigration first thing so we could perhaps get clear of the dock before the wind picked up any more, but this was dashed at the first hurdle when the first office remain steadfastly closed. I along with other concerned boaters asked the Customs officer when the desk would open and she shrugged and said rather enigmatically, ‘ when it opens’. Eventually an hour later I completed all the formalities and returned to Serafina and after a discussion with the marina manager, we agreed that we would attempt our departure with his help at 10.00am. He assured us that it would all be very straightforward and for the umpteenth time asked us our draft (Depth). I told him again that it was 2.2 metres and yet again he looked horrified that we had even attempted to come into the berth – let alone planned to leave it on a day like today!

 

So at 10.00am he re-appeared with an assistant and Nezih (our Turkish neighbour) and a few others assembled to help. The challenge was to quite simply drive straight out of the berth, execute a very sharp right turn followed by another and skim down the side of 75 ft  gin palace before weaving through the impossibly tight slalom of red buoys on the end of the dock. Oh yes and of course the killer – there was not actually enough depth of water straight out from the berth for any of this to actually happen. He waited until there was a lull in the wind and off we went and by and large it went swimmingly well. We did the difficult part I felt and were clear of the first bit of the dock and safe from being driven by the wind onto the corner of the concrete quay. I waved a ‘thank you’ to the assembled throng in time and saw the manager shake his head and declare that we should be aground now. That is more or less the point at which we stopped as our keel slid into the thick soft mud on the bottom of the lagoon! But a wiggle with the bow thruster and a little more power and we were off on our way.

 

We had to kill a bit of time before the 11.00 am bridge opening so we pottered slowly up and down the main channel of the lagoon for Jo to see around. Finally as the radio crackled to announce that the bridge would be opening shortly, we eased our way into the big throng of racing yachts all heading out for the start of the first race of the week long Heineken Regatta. Minor panic as we touched the bottom again even though we were well inside the green buoys and I had visions of us missing the bridge as a result, but all was well and we swept out in to the beautiful turquoise blue Caribbean sea again with several dozen other yachts.

 

We set the sails and we about to head off north as planned when we realised that the big race start was only 20 minutes away and so we joined a group of what looked like other cruisers and sailed over towards the start line to get a better view. It was almost too late when we realised that the yachts we were sailing with all had numbers fixed to their guard rails and were in fact competitors heading for the start line, so we veered off and were able to watch things from a rather safer view point than the grid itself!

 

We then had a cracking sail round to Marigot which is the principle port on the French side of St Martin.  We had 20 to 25 knots of wind all the way and the early reach gave way to a tough beat once we rounded the western end of the island, but we made such good speed that we sailed all the way.  Lots of excitement on board as the fishing rod bent double and the line screamed out, but sadly this turned out to be bad news as the lure had been ‘caught’ on some part of a large yacht that had chosen to cut across our stern for no apparent reason.  One lost lure and 200 metres of line. We dropped anchor in Marigot Bay, (surprisingly unimaginative these old explorers – how many Marigot Bays are there out here?) tucked in behind the marina but we were slightly disappointed to find it very rolly in a quite unpleasant way. But it was too late to head off anywhere else so we elected to ride it out.