Week 41: St Martin (18nm)

A week of two halves as we spent a few days running errands in Marigot before hosting our friends David and Katrina for a long weekend. Given the time constraints, we chose to keep the sailing miles low and instead enjoy lots of time at anchor and ashore.

Captain’s log

10th Feb: The main focus of the day was finding a location to watch England’s progress in the Six Nations, in which they were up against French in the second round. Disappointingly the French side of St Martin had no listed sports bars and so we were forced to take a bus over to the Dutch side and try our luck in a variety of different sports bars – five failed attempts later and ten minutes after kick-off I was getting worried, but then we found salvation in the ‘Dinghy Dock’ who were showing it two hours later on a delayed schedule. Kicking our heels somewhat, we worked our way through their remarkably good draught beer selection and then enjoyed a very one-sided game, with Seahawk able to attend the second half, before returning to Serenity with a mild case of consumption related illness (cause undetermined).

11th Feb: I undertook a long dinghy expedition (round trip 4nm) to get some parts from the Dutch side, which lived up to its billing of amazing selection at competitive prices and made me very jealous of what we could have achieved had we done our refit here instead of Croatia. It was an exciting trip down with the wind behind, but this was tempered by a very soggy return trip in which I was distracted by melancholy thoughts of all the wrecks littering the lagoon. Met up again with Marcy and Damon from Wanderlust and bonded over the common experiences of Brits and Americans unable to comprehend the current domestic news cycle.

12th Feb: A quiet day tinkering on the boat interspersed with some Amazon Prime TV binging on our new Digicel data card (Startup has confirmed I can watch any series with Ron Perlman in it). The rolliness of the Marigot anchorage persuaded us to start Beta testing a ‘flopper-stopper’ which showed promising signs although needs refinement to shift the centre of buoyancy forwards. Laura’s reward for making me some fancy shelf covers in the wardrobe was to pick a movie and she chose Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr and I kept my promise about staying awake for at least the first half.

13th Feb: We moved round to the Fort Louis marina (check out the interesting layout), and were given a super yacht spot, despite other normal spots being available. With guests arriving the next day, we got busy tidying the boat, refilling our water tanks for the first time in 26 days (a new Serenity record) and also investigated a couple of holding tank smell reduction strategies that were inspired by conversations with Seahawk (little did we know their holding tank had just exploded…). We felt we’d earned our pizza meal out in the evening, which was the best we’ve had since leaving Italy!

14th Feb: I had dropped one boat part too many into the sea the previous day whilst servicing the Furlex, and decided that I had to at least try and retrieve it from the grim-looking 5m deep marina water – I celebrated my success in finding it by erupting from the sea like the Lady of the Lake with Excalibur, much to the amusement of the marina staff. We also finally managed to fix the navigation lights (pro-tip: give Laura the fiddly jobs) and then welcomed our good friends Katrina and David aboard, which was a great excuse to all go for fro-yo. Many hands made the trip to the grocery store much easier and we then enjoyed an epic dinner of fajitas and lime based drinks (the latter made using a beautiful personalised muddler that K and D gifted us, which fits very nicely with the personalised cooler cups Xmas present from Laura’s brother’s family).

15th Feb: Started the day with a delicious pastry breakfast from the local french bakery, then prepped the boat to go only to discover that the Furlex wasn’t, in fact, repaired so were limited to motor sailing under main only. Scrapped plans to stay at the nature reserve island of Tintamarre given the waves were inducing the higher end of the Jeans Nausea scale for one of our guests (but still managed to spot 4 turtles). Scooted round to nearby and more sheltered Anse Marcel for a fun evening of aborted BBQs and playing Kaboo.

16th Feb: Introduced our guests to some of the less glamorous parts of cruising life as they helped lower and raise the genoa as part of Furlex repair part II, which was far more successful. Celebrated with a hike off a local beach that never quite matched the trail map and was curtailed by encounters with a herd of cows and some aggressive wasps. Made the short hop round to Grand Case and found a delightful beach strip with some great ice cream, which was then surpassed by our tapas / burger dinner in the relaxed but funky Blue Martini restaurant – a fitting last evening with our friends who unfortunately had to fly back to Boston the next morning.

Story of the week

David and Katrina are some of our favourite people in the world and are long-time attendees of our annual Spring Break holiday that is now in its 11th year. One common theme amongst all the friends that join us in this tradition is a love of games as a basis for spending time together, and David and Katrina are certainly up there with some of the fiercest competitors within the group. A few years before, they had introduced the group to Secret Hitler (or its more PC alternative Secret Voldemort), which became an instant favourite and one that we have now gone on to share with many friends outside the Sp’reak group. As such, it was fitting that we were able to return the favour and introduce them to a new game that we had recently discovered called Kaboo.

The game was introduced to us by my sister and Elliott (who have an uncanny knack of discovering good games), and we played it with them many times during the two weeks they spent with us over Christmas. You can find a clear set of the rules here, but in summary the game is a fantastic blend of memory, speed and luck that makes for a real roller-coaster ride. You spend much of the game in ignorance of the cards in your hand as you have to keep them face down on the table, and occasionally you end up with more knowledge about other players’ hands than they do. It is this feature that sets up one of the most difficult plays of the game, where you are allowed to play a card from someone else’s hand before they are able to, which earns you a solid reward.

We played the game most nights with our guests; Katrina picked up the intricacies of the game remarkably quickly and very soon became the player to beat. Fortunately for Laura and me, David took a bit longer to pick it up, and much to his chagrin became particularly vulnerable to others playing his cards for him. This continued until the final night, when Katrina’s taunting clearly became too much for David to bear and he made it his mission to pay her back for the all the previous attacks. Thus, Laura and I witnessed what is probably the most physical round of Kaboo that has ever been played, which culminated in the wrestling match that was partly captured on film below. We decided at that point to take a breather for the sake of their (recently formalised) marriage, and changed to a more sedate game for the rest of the evening. It’s clear that before we introduce this to the wider Spring Break group in the summer, I need to clarify the rules around biting, eye gouging and fish-hooking with Liv as it wasn’t something that she covered in her initial explanations of the rules.

Parting thoughts

Saint Martin proved to be a good island to visit if you are on a boat looking for parts, but struggled to win us over as a destination to visit for the most part. It has a bit of a confused identity due to the odd Dutch / French division of the island (allegedly decided by a walking race), and the Dutch side is clearly faring better in the post-hurricane rebuilding process than the French.

However, the one thing the French side does offer is the best food we’ve had in the Caribbean, including a phenomenal bakery that we visited most days for either pastries or sandwiches. The culinary experience was then topped off with the meal we had at Blue Martini in Grand Case, which was truly something different and well worth a visit if you happen to be passing through SXM.