We left Barbuda and headed for the Dutch side of St Martin’s, arriving in front of 3 days of rain, wind, and thunderstorms. The sail up there had a bit of everything from short motors in the lulls to reefed sails in 27 knots of wind. It made for a brisk passage, and we got in with 2 hrs of daylight to spare.
We dropped the hook in Simpson Bay, which is large, mostly sandy, and outside the bridge to enter the lagoon. Todd reported clearing in with customs went well, and the office was easy to locate on the way to the bridge.
We had hopped to pick up our parts before the Easter holiday closures, but that wasn’t possible. We took the boat into the lagoon and anchored up for a few nights in order to get a few provisions, top up the fuel tanks, and get the hull scrubbed. It was much calmer inside, but the water wasn’t clean enough for swimming. It was interesting to be anchored with only 2 feet of water under the boat, and it was mostly catamarans in our area.
There were cruise ships coming and going from Philipsburg over the holiday weekend, and lots of tourists were onshore. This explained the large selection of good restaurants, bars, and cafes. We found the best happy hour was at The Soggy Dollar with 1$ bottled beer. This was also a good place to get the locals tips about the best boat workers ( hense the hull cleaning!), and the best place to get parts. The impressively stocked marine stores like Budget Marine and Island Waterworld, had about everything a sailor could need.
We were able to catch up with our friends on Smile that were over in Margot Bay on the French side. Anchoring was free, but there weren’t the same level of services available over there, and it seemed a bit sketchy on shore.
On the Dutch side, we found the locals were approachable and friendly, the food of a good quality and better than Antigua, and the anchoring fee around 41$ for a week. However, it was not a good place to walk around, as there were limited sidewalks and no hiking trails nearly.
We are heading up to the USVIs next, and hope to see a weather window for the hop up to the Exumas. First things first though, we’ll try and land on Great St James Island off of St Thomas, to check out “PI VI” for a pizza made on a boat there. We’ll post a pic if the plan comes to fruition!