Last Day Favorite Photos-St. Martin Sailing

I asked the boys to contribute to my last post of the trip with their favorite photo from the adventure and their own caption.  

From Steve:

Scott, my favorite.  It was a great place with great staff great friends after a great day of sailing and I'm kinda smiling. 

From Bill:

Scott, here is my favorite photo from the week. Our last day of sailing, our boat is heeled over with 22 knots of wind in our sails, beer in my hand, hanging out with great friends and life is good!

From Dan:

Fantastic dinner at O Plongio in Marigot on St. Martin. GREAT FOOD WITH MY PIRATE BUDDIES SERVED BY A PERKY WAITRESS!

From John:

A hassle to obtain. Suitable for framing. 

And from me:

So many memorable and symbolic pictures but I chose the photo from the start of our sail, teamed up again with my longtime colleagues that became my very good friends, at the beginning of yet another adventure together.  And it was a good one. 

Marigot to Grand Case-Last Day

Wake up to one more day of sunshine and broken clouds.  Good morning Marigot!

We love Marigot too!!

Job #1 today is to get our negative COVID tests done within a day of departure to the US so we dinghy back to our dinner restaurant from last night to use their wifi and a little corner of a space when they opened for breakfast to do our Binax Telemedicine tests we all bought before we left the US. We had delicious croissants and cappuccinos too!

The Binax concept is a good one but when you’re streaming on a weak internet it becomes frustrating and at a minimum, awkward as you can see Steve trying to “show” Ramesh on the other end of the app his boxes QR code.  Steve set the record for disconnects at around a dozen!

Bill’s on his way to starting his test too.  I ended up having to hold his phone for him over the test kit like a hovering drone.  

Dan tries to get his test strip verified by his rep. 

And hear are my results. Getting these results all uploaded to our airline travel apps later on in the day proved a little more frustrating if you can imagine that.  

Our Covid tests all passed negative we now had time to shop the outdoor bazaar for gifts and mementos of our very good week. Everything was reasonably priced in US$.

We found time to linger, eat and drink in yet another French cafe for lunch before heading back to the Gilmith for our last sail.

And sail we did with the majority of the 8nm journey tacking into a 22nph wind with a good amount of heal to keep us on our toes.  This is one of the calmer moments when we could comfortably grab a phone and take a photo. 

 
And the heeling continued at dinner in the “Lolo” area near the dock in Grand Case at “The Sky’s the Limit where we had great food  with more of a Caribbean rather than French flair and wonderful service again.  

The owner, Marsha, crushed the service, quality of food and hustled continuously. 

St. Bart’s to Marigot, St Martin

Today was a good day. All the days have been good but this was a very good day.  We sailed 25 nm running on a NW heading to Marigot.  We had an 18 to 20 nmph wind behind us and made 7 to 8  knots/hr.  

John challenges our auto pilot for who can steer the best line for the latter part of the sail.  

Barnacle Bill enjoying the day. 

Redbeard chilling on the starboard rail with St. Martin in the distance.  

Cap’n Steve keeping an eagle eye on the ship and the motley crew. 

John shows off his electrifying personality (and Caribbean hair). 

This may look like Steve is applying first aid to my left arm at first glance but actually it’s a sacred and hallowed moment.  Cap’n Steve is  inducting me into the Pirate Hall of Fame (Jr. member status).  

Now I can proudly wear my new pirate tattoo until I die or whenever it washes off, whichever comes first.  

And to celebrate we decide to go steady for the rest of the trip and jump into the bay at Marigot as a symbol of our commitment.  

We wandered around aimlessly in Marigot until we found another delicious French meal where we gorged ourselves so much our lovely server and her accomplice had to take our selfie for us.  Tre bon!!!

Good night.

Hobnobbing in St. Bart

An hour and half sail from “Le Rock” puts us into the upscale island of St. Barthelemy, a collective of the French otherwise known as St. Bart’s; play ground of the rich and famous or wannabe’s. Our previous harbors were empty and lonely compared to what we see in St. Bart’s.  We’re also starting to feel a little bit of  “size” anxiety comparing our boat to the many, many +100’ yachts we’re seeing.  In the other harbors we had the big boat but not here.  But you know they say it’s not the size of your boat that matters, only how you sail it!

After clearing customs again we had a chance to experience the upscale harbor village.  It’s was a combination of Europe meets Caribbean look and feel.  

We explored St. Bart on foot for an hour or so to get the lay of the land.  This anchor from the 18th century was found in 1980 and brought here, apparently to give me anchor size anxiety now too. 

There was almost an international incident when we stopped to sample some local brews and they brought three Blondes instead of the three IPA’s we ordered.  John played the bad cop role for us and by the time the local gendarme arrived we had our IPA’s and our US Ambassador was instructed to stand down, at least for this round.  

We had paninis and burgers and watched the pretty women and cool cars pass us by as we lingered in true cafe manner. 

We spotted the French submarine fleet on the way back to our boat and began to understand why the Australian’s decided to buy US submarines instead of French. 

And here’s the Gilmith, still anchored in +10 meters of water with only a 50 meter chain but she’s holding okay.  Ideally we’d have 70 meters of chain out to improve the geometry for the anchor to hold but alas we only have 50m so with fingers crossed and mild winds we’ll find ourselves in the same location when we wake in the morn. 

🤞

Good night St. Bart's. 

 

Ile Tintamarre to a Rock Near St. Barts

After a rolling night of sleeping from the minimal sheltering Tintamarre offered us and breakfast the boys did a little snorkeling. John and Bill are headed off to eventually spot sea turtles, stingray, and jellyfish before they returned. 

Steve followed by Dan, both  charged by competitive zeal and not to be outdone by Bill and John, report an octopus and shark to the list of aquatic wildlife spotted.  Actually, would you believe just an octopus?  I made up the shark.

🤫


We drove the Gilmith out of our little harbor by 1:20 and headed about 10 miles SSE towards St. Barts. Open water to our east and 18 kt. winds gave us some nice swells to sail through.  Hardly any pleasure boats to be seen again today but we did pass this sailing Winnebago, I mean catamaran, heading back from where we came.

After Steve let me try to moor the boat (major failure I’m afraid) Steve and Dan shake off the bad memories of my sailing by beginning with some complimentary flavored rum from Dream Yachts while I curl up in the fetal position in the bilge. 

😢

Another view of the “Rock” looking to the southeast.  Apparently goats overran this little environment in recent past and destroyed most of the flora but after lots of goat stew, goat chops, etc. by the locals the greenery is starting to return.  While fairly barren it did offer us excellent shelter from the east winds and an excellent evening for another boat cooked meal of pork tenderloin, green beans and Mac & Cheese.  

This big fat yacht crashed our little party shortly before dinner time but our buzz remained unharshed.  I bet they even had cooks and servants to serve their meal too!  Of all the nerve!!

Steve and John do a little sail planning for tomorrow’s short sail to St. Barts where the rich and famous are awaiting for us to arrive. 

Dan leads our observance of yet another glowing sunset to end another great day. 

Shoeless Scott and Where Are We?

The sea is a cruel teacher and it taught me to never leave my deck shoes on the dingy anywhere including Sandy Island where we had dinner.  Apparently our dinghy wasn’t far enough up the beach and my left shoe is now resting in Davy’s locker. Dan was nice enough to loan me his crocs for the day. 

A few of us went ashore when we woke at Crocus Bay where I was able to find two replacement shoes and scare this nice shoe store lady to death when I asked her for a selfie with me. 

Good bye Crocs, hello to my new island style shoes.  

Walking back to Crocus Bay to the Gilmith which you can see just to the left all by its self out in the bay.  Our experience so far is cruising is still suffering from COVID and there are no crowds. 

If you’re like me you don’t know where I am so I thought I should show all of us. This evening as I sit on the back of the boat enjoying the setting sun I am the blue dot.  

Zoomed in a bit you can see I’m east of Puerto Rico and north of Grenada where Reagan beat back the rebels in the 80’s and saved all of the American med school students from socialism.  

Now you see me south of Anguilla where we’ve been the last few nights and east of the north tip of St. Martin where we first picked up our boat. 

This is a closer shot of just St. Martin (French is north, and Dutch Sint Maarten is on the south side). 

And thanks to Google Earth this is exactly where I am right now, moored 70 meters from the beach on a  a little slip of barren island called Ile Tintamarre……

….having a whiskey on the rocks after a refreshing swim.  We are the only people here tonight as we feed ourselves with big fat burgers cooked over charcoal, fried taters, and baked beans with a Merlot.

🍷 

Good night.