Get comfy; this one is long. I threw in a few subtitles so you can scroll to pick & choose what you want to read.
It’s hard to believe we’ve been in St. Martin almost three weeks. As I wrote two weeks ago, our friend Ian was with us the first week here. Since then, time has been doing that thing where it seems to be racing by and slowly ticking along simultaneously. You know what I mean?
We stayed anchored in Marigot Bay for nine nights. It’s a busy harbor, so there’s lots of rolling during the day due to boat wakes, but it sure is convenient for getting places ashore. There is an excellent public dinghy dock on the bay side and another on the French side of the lagoon. From either, it’s a short walk to numerous stores and restaurants. Sometimes it’s a little too convenient, because we’ve eaten a lot of easily accessible croissants and baguettes. This country is not good for my waistline, but oh do the French know how to do pastry and bread! From where we anchored in Marigot Bay, it was also less than a 3-mile dinghy ride to the Dutch side. Visiting the Dutch side from the French side by dinghy or land transport does not require a passport nor clearing into the country. Convenient.
Our time in St. Martin has included some socializing with cruising friends, a little snorkeling, several shore excursions, and a lot of boat tasks, especially for Dave. The convenience of Marigot Bay made it easier for us to do the shore-based things we wanted and needed to do. When those items were ticked off the list, we popped up one bay to Friars Bay. It’s quieter, not busy, and less the 3 miles by dinghy back to Marigot should the need arise.
Shore excursions fell into the categories of meeting friends for meals, making purchases, and touring. We got in two dinners with our friends from Seas the Moment before they had to continue their journey to the Dominican Republic. Running into and spending time with them has been something we’ve looked forward to each cruising season. St. Martin boasts 4 very well stocked marine stores- Ile Marine on the French side, Budget Marine on the Dutch side, and an Island Water World on each side. We have made several stops for a variety of items we’ve needed for specific installation or repair jobs, plus some upgrades and replacements. We made three tourist excursions on the French side and two on the Dutch side, which I will write about separately.
Fort Louis
One day we made the less than ½ mile walk from the Marigot public dock up to Fort Louis for some great views of the surrounding area. Shore excursions like this always involve food ashore as well. After the fort, we went to our favorite bakery (photo at top of post). We split a scrumptious cinnamon roll and availed ourselves of their free WiFi to update apps and operating systems. That always takes longer than we think it will, so of course by the time we were done it was lunchtime and we “had to” eat ashore. We ate at one of the small restaurant stalls down at the Marigot Market. There’s a boardwalk of sorts lined with a dozen or more of these, each capable of seating maybe 30 people, all serving local fair with a variety of influences including Caribbean, Creole and French. It was a delicious way to conclude this trip ashore.
Pic Paradis and the AMuseum
Our second shore excursion on the French side required a rental car. We picked up our car around 9am. It was a bit of a beater, but perfect for the first part of our day when we took it up some precarious roads to within a ½ mile of the peak of Pic Paradis, the highest point on the French side of St. Martin. We hiked the last ½ mile to the summit for the views. Our first view was of two pairs of radio & cell phone towers surrounded by fencing with both razor and barbed wire. The nearer set was that demolished by hurricane Irma in 2017, the second set was the replacement. Hmmm… not very scenic. A narrow path around the fencing brought us to a small overlook of part of Marigot Bay to a bit north. Surely there was more than that? There was. A trail perpendicular to the pair of defunct towers led us to a better overlook. That view extended from Ile Pinel on the north end of Baie Orientale to the eastern part of Philipsburg on the Dutch side, on gthe south end of the island. If it had been a clearer day, we would have been able to see all the way to St. Bart’s. As it was, it was lovely, and we were thankful for the partial overcast; it kept it cooler. From Pic Paradis we drove around to French Quarter on the east side of the island to the Amuseum Naturalis, a free outdoor museum highlighting the nature and heritage of St. Martin. We had briefly visited it with Ian, but Dave & I wanted more time to explore it. It is well laid out with engaging signage that is both informative and succinct, and includes excellent photographs. The exhibits include local/endemic and invasive animal and plant species, a beautiful and well-labeled general garden, plus medicinal garden and more. We enjoy these kinds of exhibits and spent about 2 hours exploring. Unfortunately, the cloud cover was gone and it was ridiculously hot and humid. We were dripping sweat standing still reading signs. We ran out of energy partway through the medicinal plants exhibit and didn’t even get to the local poetry display. We dragged our soggy bodies back to the air conditioned car, sucked down more ice water, and went in search of lunch, which we found at a small place near Orient Beach. Nothing fancy, just paninis, but there was a breeze from both the sea and ceiling fans. Relief from the heat! Restored to full charge by lunch and more cool drinks, we set off back to Marigot and then on to the Dutch side to make our final provisioning run of the season. It was an enjoyable, productive and thoroughly exhausting day.
Excursions to the Dutch side
We made two land-based excursions to the Dutch side that did not involve marine stores. Our destinations were not accessible by dinghy, and were too far to walk to from the closest dinghy dock on the Dutch side. We could have taken a bus from Marigot, but had read that some of the buses, which are really 12-15 passenger minivans, were not all air conditioned. Marigot to Philipsburg, with traffic and stops, would have been about 45 minutes. That would be too long on a packed bus with no AC. We opted, instead, to dinghy just under 3 miles through the lagoon to the dinghy dock we’d used before in Simpson Bay (the town, not the actual bay). Then we asked a nice local which bus we should take to Philipsburg. Oddly, it was not one labeled Philipsburg, go figure. So, we crossed the street and flagged down the next bus labeled ‘Maho.’ It was air conditioned, and only a 15 minute ride- Yay! The ride was also cheap, just $2 USD per person each way, significantly cheaper than a taxi. Learning how to use public transportation on the islands takes a bit of work and tapping into local knowledge, but we find it more than worth the effort. Where were we heading? Keep reading.
This first Dutch side trip was to The Yoda Guy Movie Exhibit, created, curated and still run by Nick Maley. Nick worked on 50+ movies during his career doing creature creation and actor prosthetics before retiring to settle in the Caribbean. This is a specialty exhibit that pre-CGI SciFi movie geeks like me and Dave enjoy. Enjoy it we did! The exhibits mostly had to do with creatures and prosthetics created for movies Nick worked on, and models used in movies (some actual, some Nick recreated). There were also similar items from movies on which Nick did not work. But there was so much more- pages from scripts, samples of old contracts, comics based on movies, photos from movie sets, etc. It’s amazing how much he fit into such a small footprint. Nick also interspersed a few DVDs of himself explaining exhibits, plus interviews with others. The first big movie Nick worked on was Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It is because of this work that he refers to himself as “The Yoda Guy.” He was one of a team of four whose job it was to create the Taunton, the Wampa, and, most importantly, Yoda. His favorite movie he worked on (we asked him) was Krull, which we now want to watch. The two things I most enjoyed about this exhibit were 1) we got to talk with Nick for quite a while, not only about movies, but also about cruising, because he used to do that too, and 2) the stories interspersed throughout the exhibit that only someone who was there could tell. Oh my goodness, I could go on and on about this place! I won’t do that, though, because I’d bore most of you more than I already do. Instead, here’s a link to the official web page for The Yoda Guy Movie Exhibit and Nick’s own web page. Moving on…
Another day, we repeated our dinghy/bus ride to Philipsburg, this time to visit the Sint Maarten Museum. This is a small, one floor, two room museum in a nondescript setting in what is otherwise a shopping and eatery area for cruise ship people. It was a gem, if, like me and Dave, you enjoy museums that tell you stories about the local history and culture. They did a nice job collecting and displaying items from various time periods- from the original Amerindian inhabitants through Dutch settlement of the area, the plantation period & industry of the island, abolition of slavery, plus a little about the natural environment and geology. I would have liked to have seen more individual items labeled, but there were informative signs that gave a general overview of each display. It didn’t take long to go through, and we followed it with lunch at a little restaurant on Old Street before our return trip to Lady.
A brief snorkel at the Arch
After nine days in Marigot Bay, and all of that land stuff, we needed a change of scenery. We hauled anchor one morning and cruised a mile south to Baie Rouge to snorkel through ‘The Arch,’ a natural rock arch at water level, and the surrounding point. Always hopeful, we’d heard there was great snorkeling. It wasn’t. The reef must have been amazing when it was alive, but all that remains now is the base structure, a bunch of algae growth and very little else. We swam out to a rock a little further out where we did see some coral regrowth and more fish. Maybe there’s hope for that reef yet. We did enjoy snorkeling through the arch, and we enjoyed lunch aboard Lady in the pretty anchorage. After lunch, we cruised back north to Friars Bay, one bay up from Marigot, where we have been for four days as I write this on Wednesday, May 22nd.
Boat tasks
Finally, boat tasks; they seem never ending. Many are the typical chores of laundry, cleaning and cooking. I do most of the laundry and cleaning; we split the cooking. Repairs and installations fall to Dave; I occasionally play a supporting role. Two such tasks were tended to since Ian departed.
First, for those of you who read my post about our holding tank woes, I am happy to report that we finally resolved the issue. As you may recall, our holding tank was backing up into our bilge when it got to just shy of being full. If you need more detail than this, you’ll have to go back and (re)read that post. According to the original Voyage boat drawings, all the hose connections Dave needed to see should have been accessible under the port aft companionway deck plate (that’s the removable floorboard at the bottom of the stairs on the left side of the boat). They weren’t. Even down on his belly with a bright flashlight Dave couldn’t see the connections well and certainly could not access them. They were under the floor of one or both port side heads. In each head there is a shower grate (big rectangle with draining holes) over a recessed area just above the bilge with a collection drain leading to a sump pump that pumps shower water overboard. Dave cut a 12” x 14” hole in the recessed floor of the port aft head so he could see into the bilge. Well, that gave him access to all the connections to the holding tank, but they weren’t the problem. Dang! Then he cut a similar hole in the forward head, our head. Bingo! There was a 5” or so crack in the ¼” thick fiberglass layer that creates the top of the holding tank. How the heck did a crack form inside? We’ll never know for sure, but some stress or sequence of stresses over time resulted in the crack forming and/or enlarging to the point where we noticed it this year. This is where I come in. Dave has become highly allergic to the hardener in 2-part epoxies, and this allergic reaction occurs in his lungs resulting in pneumonia-like symptoms. When diagnosed seven years ago, he was told that if he continued to work with epoxy, he would either need a lung transplant, or he’d die. Okay, time for Lisa to learn to work with epoxy. Dave routed out the area around the crack and set me up to do the epoxy-fiberglass work. I was nervous, because I’d only ever used epoxy alone to fill small holes. Under Dave’s tutelage, and his inspection of my first two layers of fiberglass (on a held breath) I knew I was doing okay. I put on a third layer, then set up the fan to blow from the companionway into the head and out its porthole so no fumes got inside while it cured for the next seven hours. Dave stayed in the cockpit until dinner time, at which point even I couldn’t detect any smell anymore (my nose being much more sensitive to such odors than Dave’s is). Two days later we filled the holding tank with sea water and watched. No leaking into the bilge- hooray! Dave took the opportunity to replace sixteen rusty hose clamps with brand new ones, installed an access plate in each hole he’d made in the heads, and replaced the shower grates. Now he has easy access to that area, should it be necessary in the future.
The next big task was/is an installation. Our freezer has always been inefficient and is now on its last legs. We ordered a new one from a store in Martinique in December and it met us in the USVI in late February, having been back ordered for a while. Since it was going to be a multi-day project that ended with our shutting off the freezer for at least one of those days, Dave opted to do it near the end of our cruise and in St. Martin where it’s easy to get the plumbing and wiring pieces he needed to do the installation. Buying the “freezer” included only the condenser, compressor, thermostat and cooling pump. Over the past three days, he has done some of the prep work by installing most of the plumbing and wiring elements. Sometime in the next week or so, once there’s less food in our freezer, he will finish the installation, which requires a new through-hull for the drain (through-hull = cutting a hole in the hull, this one above water line), and installing the condenser, compressor, thermostat, and cooling pump. That’s a lot of work in cramped, hot spaces for Dave. He’s a trooper. It’s just fortunate that he can do all this stuff, because if we had to hire someone to do the work, yikes $$$!
Sometime within the next two weeks we need to get to St. Kitt’s. We’re hoping for a good weather window but may have to settle for a less favorable one. Our one firm deadline this cruising season is hauling out in mid-June because we have stuff to do back home the latter part of the month. Our move to St. Kitt’s could happen as soon as this weekend, Memorial Day weekend.
UPDATE: We are in St. Kitt’s! A weather window presented itself yesterday, Saturday 5/25. It took us 12 hours from anchor up to anchor down, 2am-2pm, to travel the 60 nm. It was a decent passage. My apologies for posting this so long after I wrote it. Cell signal in St. Martin is abysmal and I couldn’t even upload a picture, let alone the slide show. Great signal here in St. Kitt’s, though, so I finished up today, Sunday 5/26.
Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other!
Life on Lady 