Monday 25 Feb, St.Martin day 25: Last bit of shopping, hydrofoil lesson, and preparations for departure.
Good sleep despite the rolling, and we vouch today is the last day in St. Martin. But before we leave, we must take advantage of the chandleries once more. Our collection of flags comes out all spread over the bed and we quickly make a list with the ones we are missing for the next islands to visit till we get to Panama. Armed with the list we head ashore. Or more to the point we get soaked on the long dinghy trip from Marigot Bay to Simpson Bay.
First stop Customs and Immigration for check out formalities. They seem to be busy with paperwork for the boats and crews that are arriving for the Heineken Regatta. But we don’t have to wait too long. And we are checked out, departure tomorrow for Anguilla.
Next stop, Island Water World, where we find only two of the flags from our list. The rest we will have to look for in the next islands. What we do find are some pilot books which we didn’t have and a world atlas with the ocean currents. Very interesting but too expensive, so we leave that one on the shelf.
Then off to the dive center where Glen left our dive tanks three weeks ago for inspection. And guess what, they are just as he left them, un-inspected. Everyday they have said their compressor will be fixed the next day but it never did 🙁
And for the fun part of the day, we go to B52 kiting school where Glen has another lesson on hydrofoil. I went on the boat with Pierre, the instructor, to watch Glen’s performance and he did quite well today: he was mostly above water rather than under. I suspect we will soon have a hydrofoil added to the collection of water toys onboard.
Back at Cloudy Bay (which is still rolling badly) Glen attacks the aft lockers. He needs to store back in the dive cylinders. And in order to do so, first he must re-arrange the lockers, as everything slid all over the place during the last sail.
After lunch some relaxing time in the cockpit, reading my book to the sound of dinghies speeding by.
Today is our last chance to fill the fridges with the French goodies, so late afternoon we head ashore armed with Pony (our shopping trolly) and lots of shopping bags. Direction Hyper-U. But to our disappointment, many of the shelves are empty. No nice cookies or chocolates, no nice fruits, no fresh meats… it almost feels like the population must be having a panic-buying session. Or the supply boat didn’t arrive! Either way, we leave with very little of what we came for.
By the time we get back to Cloudy Bay it’s dark. And she is really rolling now. We can see big swell coming in, some of the waves are almost 1m high. To show how bad it is I actually get sea-sick during the evening and have to go to bed early. We just desperately hope Anguilla anchorage won’t be so rolly. We really do deserve a quiet night for once.
