We're staying in St Maarten a bit longer than planned;  we have a few jobs to do, are in no hurry, so it suits us to stay, probably till Monday.

Primary purpose of being here was shopping, and that has generally been successful.  Key items were a portable petrol genset and a secondhand dinghy.  After disappointment in both Island Waterworld and Budget Marine in Dutch St Maarten we considered shipping from the UK, but then found one in French St Martin so that was sorted.

However the trip by tender to French St Martin (Marigo Bay) took us 40 minutes, we found no secondhand tenders anyway, so finally bit the bullet and bought a new tender and engine.  The customer service from Island Waterworld was infinitely better than that from Budget Marine, so we bought a Highfield 3.1m aluminium hulled rib tender, plus 18hp 2 stroke Nissan engine.  Not really extended it yet - but it's pretty quick, and has plenty of space for us.

Sad day today - Sarah is leaving us to return to the sunny UK so from now on it's just Rosemary and James

While here we have managed to hook up with Toby - he sought us out (using the position fix from the Mailasail blog) so we've had a couple of meals with him.  His boat left last afternoon - couple of pictures attached, plus a picture of an Iguana we spotted which must have been about 1.5m long.