Feb 12–Feb 28 St Maarten We arrived in St Maarten Feb 12 and settled in for awhile. One half of the island is Dutch, the other half is French. The anchorage we’re in, Simpson Bay Lagoon, is split between the 2 countries. We chose to check in on the Dutch side because the big marine stores are on this side, they speak English, use US dollars for currency and we checked in on a Saturday and there was no overtime for weekends on the Dutch side. Better yet, there was no charge for customs, the harbor fee or the bridge fee! All their rate scales for boats started at 9 meters and Opus isn’t quite 8 meters long. Jim told them they shouldn’t charge us anything since they didn’t post fees for boats less than 9 meters. They agreed!

There are so many kids Jennifer hardly knows what to do. Since we’ve been here she’s met at least 7 other cruiser girls close to her age. There have been several kids afternoons at the beach, a kids hot dog and marshmallow roast on the beach, a sleepover, several big play-dates and a birthday party. Even with all the kid activities she’s managed to get her school work done. She’s had a crash course in making choices and time management. So far so good.

Jim and Linda have had plenty of social opportunities too. Three of the boats that were part of the old “Southbound Boats” are here: Emerald Seas, Far Star and Ventosa. Wendreda and Kiah arrived about a week ago. There are lots of familiar boats and faces from Genada. There’s a huge cruiser community here and they are all in one large lagoon, so big you could go for an afternoon sail and never leave the lagoon. Social opportunities abound. We can’t tell you much about the island itself because we’ve stayed close to the boat with social activities and getting Jennifer to and from play-dates. At one of the weekly gatherings at Turtle Pier, Linda struck up a conversation with Leslie from “Far Haven”. Leslie had recently won a gift certificate for a sunset cruise and she and her husband couldn’t use it. She needed to give it way and though we were ”deserving”. Having a small boat has really worked to our advantage her in St Maarten! We had our sunset cruise on Passaat, a 99 year old, 30 meter Dutch schooner on Feb 28. We watched the sunset and the full moon rise while someone else sailed and brought us drinks and appetizers. Thanks to Jim & Sharon & the kids on Wendreda for keeping Jennifer while Jim & Linda had a night out.

In our last update we had mailed off our camera and autopilot for warranty repairs. Both are back and working well. We’re out a lot of postage, but at least we now have working units and didn’t have to buy new ones.

Goods in the stores are priced in both Dutch gilders and US dollars, but you don’t see anything in the tills but US dollars. Maybe it’s just the businesses we’ve been to. It’s a nice change for us to be using a familiar currency again, although we were getting pretty good with the Eastern Caribbean dollars. Grocery prices are lower here than any island we’ve been to since St Maarten is a duty free country. It’s time to restock the boat with lots of non-perishable good again.

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Feb 1–Feb 12 Antigua, Barbuda, St Barts February finds us still in Antigua. We took a bus to the capital city of St Johns. Jim had been there the previous week to mail back our camera and autopilot for warranty work, so he acted as our tour guide. We found our way to the remnants of Fort James, the museum and local markets. Perhaps the highlight of the day was having shwarmas for lunch. They’re basically a chicken wrap with a little salad and sauce, probably not a Caribbean food, but they sure are good. It’s the chicken that makes them special. They load up a vertical rotisserie with about 120 pounds of boneless chicken every morning and slow cook it. As the outer edges get cooked, they carve it off and serve it one shwarma at a time. (check out the picture) The next time we’re in St Johns, Antigua we’ll be back.

Kids: Wendreda with Shelly, James, Martin and Peter on board, left for English Harbor in Antigua. Jennifer was sad to see them leave because they’d had a lot of good playtime on shore and on the boats in Jolly Harbor. Opus left for Barbuda soon after that and Jennifer was thrilled to find Nell & Phil on Moon Dancer, and to find 3 girls on the beach about her own age. Blakely, Madison and Hally, from Washington state, were visiting their grandparents on a big sail boat. Let’s just say it was about as wide as Opus is long. The parents had a chance to visit too and Jim & Linda were assured that Middle School was the right time to pull Jennifer out of public school for a sailing trip. They told us she’s not missing out on a thing and neither are we.

Birthdays and Friends: We’re feeling fairly well connected to the cruising community now. Everywhere we go we seem to run into other cruisers that we’ve met along the way. The last couple of weeks have been great for that. Since we left Dominica we’ve been invited to help celebrate 3 birthdays aboard boats. The first was Peter’s (9 years old) aboard Wendreda. Peter is from Northern Ireland, but Doreen from England made a tasty English Trifle as a special treat. The second birthday celebration was for Petra on Meridian. Petra is from Germany and her friend Ursula made a tasty apple kuchen for her special day. The third was Phil on Moon Dancer. Phil is originally from England, but spent a lot of time in the US, so his wife Nell and his friend Jennifer Gay made him a pineapple and peach upside down cake for a birthday cake.

Great Quote: This is a quote we heard 2nd hand. It supposedly came from a 16 year old cruiser kid when asked about cruising friends. “I have lots of friends. They’re just all retired.” I think Jennifer would agree with that. She has some pretty special friends that fall in that category although all of them aren’t retired yet. Nell & Phil, Sim & Rosie, John & Janet, Marlene & Jim, Jim & Renata, Tom, Carl, Terry & Barb, Charles & Maria… The list goes on. There are lots of special people who have befriended her in the last year.

Barbuda: Barbuda and Antigua are two separate islands that make up one country. However, they’re very different places. Barbuda is a very low, sparsely populated island. No volcanoes here. It’s got crystal clear water and miles of white limestone beaches (they call it pink). It looks a lot like the Bahamas, but the sand is very fine and clean. Jennifer and Linda got very well acquainted with the sand after taking the inflatable kayak to shore a couple of times. The first trip was successful except that Jennifer pulled the kayak along in the surf after they got to shore and it rolled and filled with sand and water. The second trip in they were out of the kayak and on their feet when a big breaker came in and rolled them and the kayak. No one was hurt. They just had to do some better planning before they left the beach so they didn’t get rolled again on the way back to the boat. Besides beautiful beaches, Barbuda has a large frigate bird rookery. Jennifer was invited to join Nell and Phil on a tour to the rookery and got some interesting pictures of the birds and the donkeys and horses that roam free on the island.

After Barbuda it was back to Jolly Harbor for a couple of days, then on to St. Barts and St. Martin. We had thought of going to Montserrat, but after waking up one morning in Antigua to a light covering of ash on the boat from the volcano in Montserrat, we decided we really didn’t need to be any closer. Monserrat and it’s smoking volcano were visible from Antigua and Barbuda. The decision was made to leave for St Barts and sail through the night before the big northerly swells the weatherman predicted got here. No swells, little to no wind. Sounds good, but with no autopilot someone had to hold the tiller the whole time. (Yeah, we’ve been spoiled.) When the wind did pick up, Jim set up the wind vane self steerer and that gave us some freedom again. It was still dark when we went by St Barts, so we sailed on past to a little island further north, Ile Fourchue. It was a quiet place with free mooring balls – a good place to rest. Jim grilled the Cero Mackerel he caught on the way, the second we’ve had in the last few days and we all had a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, on to St Martin.

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