Happy New Year from St Maarten!

Volver arrived safely after a fairly long but uneventful overnight motorsail to windward.  St Maarten is the place for shopping and provisioning.  There is an American hardware store (ACE) with American prices! and there are vegetables and other luxuries galore!  There are many megayachts based here, and others come to provision before going off to prettier places. 



Our Neighbors in Simpson Bay Lagoon

We spent an uneventful New Years Eve in the Simpson Bay Lagoon, on the Dutch side. We did bar hop, and at the St Maarten Yacht club the first mate met Paul, who is on the steering committee for the Heineken Regatta, scheduled for 62 days from now (there is a large digital clock counting down the days, hours, and minutes:  clearly the raison d'etre of the yacht club).  Paul insisted he will personally sign our application form, should we choose to participate.  I advised him that Volver has an arch and jerry cans on the rails, and he and his friend John assured me there is a special class for cruising boats, which they called the "agricultural class".  Bovine racing, anyone?  Anyway, they were fun, we'll think about it.  All in all, we were fairly underwhelmed by the celebrations, but at least we made it up past "cruisers midnight (9 o'clock) and were awake for the fireworks.   We've heard the party was much better at St Barts. 

We did enjoy taking a long dinghy ride across the large lagoon (12 sq. miles) to Marigot Bay, on the French side, where we shopped with the cruise ship people (sarongs and t-shirts all around after sunset) and enjoyed a fabulous tropical French meal.  the French side is very different!  The Dutch side is quite American in flavour, a little run down, cars everywhere, no sidewalks, but Marigot Bay town was clean, lots of sidewalks and cafes in a central village.  Nice.  We ran into fellow Salty Dawg Archie there, and had a nice catch up, as we had not seen him since Hampton.  He is making his way home to St Lucia, after three years of cruising the coasts of eastern Canada and the US.  He had a break-in while he was at a mooring ball, through his front hatch that was closed but unlatched.  A good warning for us:  we did not lock a thing for the 6 weeks we were in the BVI, but know it is time to be more cautious

Somewhere, over the rainbow

As a result of the sun and the constant rain, there are rainbows, everday, often full on from start to stop, which we don't tend to see on land, yet no pot of gold, nor leprachauns have yet to be sighted from Volver.  We will post the pics when it happens.  You will hear it first from us, your news source for treasure. 



As usual, nothing works.  Capt'n spent hours yesterday fixing the dinghy engine. Sewing machine broken again (no technician in the Caribbean), first mates computer disabled.   There were more pics on her computer destined for the blog, will sort later.  Took the half made boom tent in to the sail loft and will have to return in 4 days time to retrieve it.  In the interim, we are done with this city life, and will go to Anguilla for a few days.  We want to be somewhere you can swim and snorkel and hike.  The captain did see a small ray trying to fly out of the water and we saw a mountain goat (on the witches tit) and turtles, but mostly this is a citified spot, with a major airport too close (reminding the Captain of his past life).  At least we have seen none of the feared disease carrying mosquitos.   

We are hale and hearty and wish all our friends and family a happy and healthy year in 2014!