Sint Maarten, St. Martin, St. Barthélemy.
Sunday 28th March, Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten.
We have died and gone to sailor's heaven. Sint Maarten/St. Martin is a small half-Dutch half-French island in the northeast Caribbean and while it's probably objectively not that exciting, amazing or wonderful in general, it does tick all the boxes for a visiting sailor.
Can you dinghy to two fantastically well stocked chandleries? Yes.
Can you dinghy to a laundry? Yes.
Is there a handy fuel dock where you can also stock up on water? Yes.
Can you dinghy to a handy rubbish bin? Yes.
Does one of the chandleries lend you bicycles for free? Yes!
Can you cycle to an amazing, big Carrefour supermarket? Yes!
Can you get salmon, mahi-mahi, wahoo and tuna? And any vegetable you can think of and fresh herbs and every type of French cheese in existence? Yes!
Can you cycle over to the French capital for a proper three course déjeuner? Yes!
Is there a good running route across the lagoon bridge and into France? Yes!
Is there an entertaining stream of superyachts parading by on their way in and out of the marinas? Yes!
Will a local shipping company provide you with a US postal address to facilitate a blowout Amazon shopping spree? Yes!!!
Is there an airport right by the bay where plane nerds can watch take-offs and landings at close quarters? Yes!!!
Is there an Irish pub? Yes!!!
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| A Paddy's Day pint(ish) at The Pub |
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| Possibly the most unwieldy bikes in the world: no gears and a back-pedal brake. |
I'm telling you. It has it all. It also has hurricanes though which might be the universe's way of making sure sailors don't just stay here forever.
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| One of the many wrecks still in the lagoon after the devastating 2017 hurricane Irma. |
The north of the island is French and the south is Dutch. Impressively, it's been this way since the 17th century when despite the fact that the European powers were playing musical chairs with most of the Caribbean islands the French and Dutch decided to play nicely, draw up an agreement and have been happily coexisting ever since. The west of the island has a big lagoon which you can access from the bays through opening road bridges. All the marine businesses are around this lagoon which means you can use your dinghy to get around. There's an anchorage and lots of marinas inside the lagoon but we've decided to stay outside in the bay and dinghy in as required.
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| Parking spaces can be hard to come by at busy times. |
We've been here almost four weeks now having finally decided it was time to leave Antigua. Just before we left we met only the second Irish sailor we've come across on this entire trip, on board Saoirsa (a compromise spelling between the joint Irish and Scottish owners). We'd been ashore when he anchored bedside us and had had horrible problems (his dinghy painter wrapped around his prop in the middle of anchoring, he had to dive overboard to free it while dragging towards us fully fendered and ready for impact) and thought he was going to run into us. When he noticed Gráinne's name he thought “Oh, good. They won't mind me crashing into them!”. He popped by after we got back to the boat to share the story over a much needed beer. And the next day we left for our overnight trip to Sint Maarten. It was completely uneventful.
We arrived and anchored in the early morning and then went ashore, with some trepidation, to (fingers crossed) check in. Please no quarantine, please no quarantine, please no quarantine. The procedure involved filling out several forms that the officers gave us (in hardcopy) and then e-mailing copies to those same officers who were sitting on the far side of the counter. Now, given we hadn't even really arrived in the country yet it seemed unlikely we would have local mobiles/internet access to facilitate this e-mailing business but, there you go, that's the procedure.
“Uh, do you have WiFi?”.
“No, but if you stand in that corner over there you can usually get the local free WiFi.”.
We couldn't.
“Uh, that's not working. Can we just hand you the forms?”.
“No.”.
“So......what should we do?”.
“You could try the WiFi in McDonald's next door.” (Karl thought he'd won the lottery at this point).
So we did. We went to McDonald's, ordered a couple of Big Macs and sat down with the painfully slow WiFi to send the forms through. And looking around we were not the only sailors using the Sint Maarten McDonald's immigration check-in procedure. On returning to the office the forms had arrived, our passports got stamped and we walked out trying to behave normally and not look overly excited. Then we may have had a little happy dance and a little excited squeal – they let us in!!!!!!
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| The dinghy dock at The Dinghy Dock bar with the lagoon in the background. |
That afternoon we dinghied ashore to The Dinghy Dock bar to celebrate (they have excellent local Pelikaan craft beer). Karl immediately met someone he knew from The Season of Debauchery in Grenada. Then who should rock up in their dinghy but the crew of Aurora (our partners in crime from Carriacou). And it pretty much continued like that – the whole world seems to have decided to descend on Sint Maarten/St. Martin. Our old friends on Umnyama are here, anchored right next to us just like this time last year in St. Helena. Heaven's Door, also from St. Helena, arrived recently. And we basically can't walk down the road without bumping into someone we (mostly Karl) know. The initial talk almost inevitably consisted of “have you been to Carrefour yet?” followed by detailed descriptions of the delicacies available there. Another evening we were in the Soggy Dollar bar for happy hour and as we left I said to Karl “I think that was John Kretschmer” (author of lots of our favourite sailing books) and he said “I thought so too”. So I guess we're not the kind of people who approach their heroes in a bar.
It seems the main two pastimes here (apart from wandering around, in awe, the aisles of the supermarkets and chandleries) are plane-watching and superyacht-watching. We went over to Maho Bay, right at one end of the runway, to watch some arrivals and departures. The planes fly by at what seems like eye-level as they come into land. And as they take off the jet blast from their engines will give you a great sand-blasted exfoliation if you stand at just the right spot on the beach. A day of pure childish fun and big grins.
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| What could go wrong? |
And the superyachts. Well, that's just another world altogether. There are lots of average-sized yachts that you can charter for a mere US$1,000,000 a week (yes, that is the correct number of zeros). They include the unfortunate “GO” which recently took out the yacht club dock. And my old friend from Antigua, “Okto”. And then there are the really serious yachts that are too big to fit through the opening bridge and get into the lagoon, they just anchor out in the bay with us. They're not for charter, the owners not needing the extra income I guess. We had “Olivia O” - owned by an Israeli billionaire she cost a mere US$200,000,000 (again, the correct number of zeros). But then she was dwarfed when “Kaos” turned up – owned by a Walmart heir she's a US$300,000,000 purchase. A. Different. World.
We popped into the Dutch capital, Philipsburg, for a visit. It has some pretty old architecture but is mainly a place all set up for many visiting cruise ships and is now looking a bit deserted and lonely. There's a street that feels like walking through an airport terminal – lined with Duty Free shops and all the fancy designer jewellery chains. Despite the fact that I clearly show no evidence of being a likely customer they were still keen to try to entice us inside. Tough times indeed I assume. There are three huge cruise ships berthed in Philipsburg which happened to be in port when covid struck and there they still are. Plus another ghost cruise ship that potters around offshore going nowhere.
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| Groot Baai with Philipsburg on the left. |
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| Deserted beachfront in Philipsburg. |
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| Is it really dignified to have a pineapple atop your courthouse? |
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| Lonely cruise ships |
St. Barth (Saint Barthelémy)
Tourism time again. We took a day trip by ferry (the shame!) along with David from Aurora to St. Martin's little neighbour island just 45 minutes but an entire world away. It's a tiny, squeaky clean, perfect little version of a small town in a quiet rural area of France.
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| A perfect little town set around a perfect little harbour. |
The land is poor quality so no-one was every very interested in setting up plantations here. France swapped it with Sweden in the 18th century in return for trading rights in Gothenburg and in the late 19th century Sweden sold it back to France. The population is overwhelmingly of European descent which adds to the feeling that you have left the Caribbean and returned to some small isolated pocket of the French mainland. But in the capital, Gustavia, there are also streets full of fancy designer shops and duty free goodies. Where else on an island with a population of only 9000 would you have a Prada, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Cartier, Bvulgari etc., etc., etc.? So unless you've got deep pockets I wouldn't plan on relocating here any time soon.
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| Good coffee and a pain au chocolat. This place was so swanky its floor was (deliberately) covered in sand causing me immense confusion as to when exactly to use the doormats. |
We decided to explore the island by scooter and this time I insisted on having my own for the first time ever. Much excitement. Until we arrived at the hire shop which is on the steepest hill in the entire world. The entire world. But after a very slow, cautious, wobbly ride/walk down the hill I started to get the hang of it. David hired a quad bike and drove in front of me as a barrier to oncoming traffic and Karl drove behind me ready to pick up the pieces. I felt like a VIP sandwiched between my security detail. Or a child with Daddy out in front and Mammy following up the rear.
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| The convoy stops to photograph a perfect little graveyard outside a perfect little church. |
The drivers on the island are incredibly polite and tolerant of a first time scooterer who is keen to stick to the speed limit, the queue building up behind me showing seemingly limitless patience. Later, as we joined some fans for a French world cup qualifier in a bar, a car stuck in a line of traffic outside waiting for someone to reverse out of a parking space had the audacity to beep its horn – the entire bar turned towards it and booed loudly. I like this place!
St. Barth also has an airport with a crazy approach right over the island's busiest round-about. If you ever fly into St. Barth take some Valium first, no really, do, you'll thank me.
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| A perfect little airport. |
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| And a fort just for Karl. |
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