Marigot Bay, St Martin.

Friday 8 May, 2020.

We have now been on board for about 60 days and only been on land a couple of hours in St George, Grenada to go to the supermarket and a couple of smaller trips to get food delivered. So we are in need of exercise.

What do we spend our time on? Well there are a lot of boat jobs to do before a long passage and we all chip in.

Alex is extremely practical and a great problem solver when it comes to technical problems. He is also good at computer work and will be setting up some of the new equipment I have bought. The list has been long, but there are still many things to do.

Serena is an excellent cook and has a lot of energy. She swim 2.000 meter each day around the boat, even though one is not allowed to swim at the moment, but that restriction will soon be lifted. She also do nearly each day an hour yoga and she does a lot of cooking and planning. She has taken charge of our food supply and is very practical in keeping New Dawn tidy. Today she cleaned to waterline.

For my part, I wish I would have one of my guitars on board, even though my left hand is still numb. I am off course also involved in the boat jobs and have done my part of the meal preparation. At the moment I have ordered a lot of things for the boat like an Iridium Go, new EPIRB, life-raft, jerrycans, binoculars, gas regulator, flags, subscribe on the Sat Phone, arranging the additional insurance covering the Atlantic crossing, etc., etc.. Most of these orders will arrive today and the life-raft likely by the end of next week, when our quarantine ends 13 May. Then we need to install and set it all up, so there is still work to do.

Christmas time.

Once we are allowed ashore, I need the gas bottles filled, get the PC repaired, buy more Internet data and visit the supermarket on the French side of the island. Unfortunately we can’t yet cross over to the Dutch side and I had hope we could do the big shopping at the supermarkets on the Dutch side as they are good and I know them well. We can use the Super U here on the French side and it is within walking distance of the dinghy dock. We also need to have the laundry done before we depart. So there is a lot to attend to and actually the days fly away, even that I am usually up by 06:30.

Also we are looking for additional crew and that has been very time consuming and most candidates are not in St Martin and as the SXM airport is closed for passenger planes, it will be impossible to get them here in time. I have so far found 3 crew here in St Martin, but they found other boats before we could get here. At the moment there don’t seem to be any crew available, so we are likely to set sail with the three of us.

Once the weather window is right for departure, hopefully around or just after 25 May, we plan setting sail for the Med via the Azores. Horta is closed at the moment and till at least end May, but will allow us 48 h to fuel and provision, but not going ashore, which is a pity as I would like to visit again Peter’s Sports Cafe and say hello to its owner José, as well as make a tour of the islands. After Horta, we are not sure if Spain and Gibraltar will be open, but I plan some days in the Balearic and South France Islands, before heading for the Golf of St Tropez to meet up with the family. I hope to be in St Tropez by end July.

Serena has seen a few fish under the boat when she is swimming. One seems to be a Barakuda, but the other one is about one meter long and I tried to fish it, but the hook was not strong enough as when it started to fight, I lost it as the hook bent. Can you tell us what type of fish it is?

What does 60 days of lockdown do to our minds? Serena and Alex developed a game today where we had to find some dress for the day and we received points for each outfit. The following are the results of the dressing party. Are we going bananas?

Monday 11 May 2020: THREE DAYS LEFT

We now have three days left of our 14 days quarantine and plan to go to town the coming Thursday to visit a hardware store, supermarket, phone company and get rid of the dustbins. On one hand we are looking forward to get our freedom of movement back, but on the other hand we worry about catching the virus and plan to wear our masks and keep distances from people.

There is a large amount of boats sailing away and this morning I counted six boats heading NE and whereas the Marigot Bay anchorage was quite busy when we arrived, it starts to thin out. Many boats are waiting for a better weather window both to sail to the USA and Europe, but also to sail south to Grenada and Trinidad for the hurricane season. Most will be gone by end May and we also hope to set sail around that time. But there is a Gale force 9 BF around Azores in about ten days time, and we must avoid that system. It looks like another system is forming further west and we will have to watch that carefully. So we are still in a limbo and have to be patient.

The SSB/HAM radio is in to be checked and hopefully the chap can repair it, as it will be nice to have as a backup and for communicating with the various nets and other boats crossing, when we are out of reach on the VHF radio (max distance is about 30 NM), whereas the SSB/HAM radio can communicate over thousand of NM. The EPIRB is also being looked at, as Budget Marine sold me one meant for the USA, so it need to be reprogrammed for the EU countries and I hope to have it back within this week. The life-raft is ordered and I should get it end week so we can install it.

Thursday 14 May 2020.

Finally the quarantine is over and we went to town and did a big shopping at Super U. The tender was very full and I had to go slow sailing back to New Dawn. We still need to get some more shopping before we depart.

Home made Tagliatelle.

New EPIRB.

Alex buying some Corona..... Not funny.

Home made bread and South Italian Sauce. Delicious.

Sunset in Marigot Bay.

And a new life-raft.

Big shopping.

Sunset in Marigot Bay.

Serena's special dessert.

I bought a breadmaker and we are looking forward to test it.

The SSB/HAM radio is repaired and Alex installed and programmed it. So far it seems to work well again.

Alex in the hammok.

Started preparing meals for the freezer. This is my 5 kg Chili Con Carne.

And home made mashed potatoes - a first for me.

The first bread loaf made this morning. Not too bad for the first time.

Another new toy.....

Alex cooking a great fish dinner.

Our neighbourhood.

New kitchen water tap installed by Alex. The old one was leaking a lot.

A figuebread was the second test.

We left Marigot Bay and anchored in two bays further north.

The fitst one was small and we had it for ourselves. Most of the houses had been destroyed by the Hurricane Irma in 2017 and it looked sad, but the beach was very nice.

Then on to Grand Case, which used to be the major gastronomic part of the French side of St Martin. But again most of the houses were either destroyed, or the top floors were very damaged.

Beautiful beach and perfect fine sand.

And the men drinking rum already at 08:00.

Serena made us a French dinner with a good selection of cheese and red wine.

Saturday 23 May:

Yesterday Serena and I went back to the supermarket and got home with loads of things. We also bought some more water as emergency reserve and we have now about 250 litres in reserve. It is surprising how we managed to store it all inside the boat.

In the meantime Alex was busy trying to repair the generator and see if we can get spare parts from Westerbeke in the USA and also to get their agent to come and have a look to find the problem, as it will not start. But it did not go too well and the agent in St Maartin was not helpful. I am now trying to get a "Dr Diesel" to come around and have a look and has been a bit difficult, so far. Otherwise the agent should show up Monday.

So it is not all great news all the time and we are now stuck until the generator is repaired. We had hopes to depart this weekend, as the weather seems OKish. The weather in the north Atlantic has in the past few weeks been chaotic and several boats has had serious problems, like a broken mast, tender ripped off the deck making holes in the deck, sprayhood washed away, etc.. Two boats from Norway went directly into a Tropical Storm that had formed between Florida and Bermuda and moved ENE. Alex advised them where to go to avoid the worth, but they escaped with some wounds. They had a tough time and one returned to the USA for repairs.

In the meantime, today, I replaced one of the navigation lamps, fixed the port back seat and we got Axel up in the mast to check the rigging - which I usually do before a long passage - and also to change the mast deck light, which had blown. It is now a LED light. Serena is preparing food and she will scrape the freezer to get rid of the excess ice. Other than the generator and finding a new weather window, I feel we are ready to head back to the Med via the Azores. Patience, patience......