Thursday 21 Feb, St.Martin day 24: Provision, dent the hire car, tick off the rest of the beaches and getting ready for vacation.
We wake to very windy conditions. Gusts of 25+knots are coming through the anchorage and Cloudy Bay is kiting all over the place pulling against the anchor. Makes us a bit worried about leaving the boat here while we go to Saba for the next 3 days. On the other hand this wind is a good test.
As we have our morning coffee, Oana points out that the catamaran in front of us seems closer than it was yesterday. And sure enough, few minutes later when we glance at it again, it is even closer. Like it would touch our bow any moment closer! I give them a good shout and the captain emerges from down below. He seemed to be oblivious of his boat dragging the anchor. On go their engines and reanchor at safe distance from us. That was a good catch. If we were not onboard, we might have found Cloudy Bay with a dent in her hull.
After breakfast I do a snorkel over our anchor to check if we dragged at all. Although the chain is occasionally pulling direct to the anchor, the anchor itself is not budging. In fact it’s buried itself so deep in the sand that I can’t even see it. So the decision is made to stay here rather then head back to the safety of the lagoon.
Today is the last day with the hire car, so it’s off to Super-U for shopping. And that is where the second drama of the day happens. I accidentally enter the car park the whole way and have to reverse out. Just as I complete the maneuver there is a loud “crunch”. Yes, I avoided the bollard I’d been concentrating on but hit a stationary car on the other side 🙁 Bugger! Not only have I caved in the entire left side of our rear bumper but there is also damage on the other car too.
The young French driver is not amused. His English is not good, and of course my French is worse, so he calls his uncle, who also happens to own the car. The uncle arrives in 10 minutes and despite the incident he is very pleasant and together we fill in the insurance paperwork. We also call the hire car company to announce the accident.
After an hour we finally get into Super-U to do our shopping. As we go around the store I can’t help but be furious with myself for such a stupid accident. I think all my car accidents have been when I was reversing, and this one adds to the list.
After Super-U we head back to Cloudy Bay to stow the frozen and chilled food in the fridges, then head back ashore. We have just a small piece of the island to complete, the beaches south of the airport. The highlight is to stand on Maho beach and watch a plane land. The beach straddles the end of the runway and is famous on YouTube for aircraft landing, just meters above people on the beach. We watch the Air France flight land and indeed it is a spectacular sight as the Airbus comes so low over the beach. Oana snaps a great photo.
We pay very short visits to few other beaches, just to tick them all off.
Don’t really feel like driving anymore. The traffic is terrible and so much destruction everywhere. So many buildings in desperate need for reconstruction and no sign of any works started on so many of them. Is there the bureaucracy of French administration that delays the works? Or is it the lack of effort from the residents? We don’t know and didn’t really asked around.
Then it’s back to Marigot to hand back the car. But not before the cut-and-polish over the dented area and a strong hand up inside the bumper to push out the majority of the damage. There now, it almost looks like new again! But even with this cleanup, the rental guy insists we pay euro550 for both the damage to the rental car and to the car we hit. Oooph that hurt our wallet for sure 🙁 From now on I must stick with reversing into trees and bollards only!
After that it’s back to Cloudy Bay to prepare for our early departure tomorrow morning: dive gear out of stowage, hiking gear, batteries charged, generator programmed to auto-start, a bit more anchor chain out, shut down one fridge …. and lots of other small thing on our “leaving the boat” list.
Then an early night ready for an early rise tomorrow.