We saw these words spray painted on the hull of an overturned sailboat in Simpson Bay Lagoon, where we spent a good part of our time in the last couple of months. Take what you want from the words, but the kids and I felt that they were a good representation of the spirit in St Maarten/ Martin. In September of 2018 hurricane Irma hit the island with the full fury of her blow. Her winds were recorded to sustain speeds of almost 300 Km/hr for 37 hours. That just blows my mind, no pun intended. Think about that, if you are driving down the highway at 100 Km/hr and you stick your hand out the window, try and hold it there, feel the wind push on your hand. Now imagine winds of more than three times that, since the force exerted by the wind is exponentially proportional to its speed. The damage sustained by these islands was devastating and more than a year later there are still signs of Irma everywhere.

When we first arrived in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten, the kids and I noticed the damaged buildings, and a lot of reconstruction all around us. Although it was evident that there was severe damage sustained due to Irma, there was a lot of work underway to restore this beautiful island. Next we moved on to Simpson Bay and eventually passed through the bridge to the Simpson Bay Lagoon. Again, Irma’s presence was still evident, including devastated apartment buildings and hotels along the beach, but in the lagoon, it was even more obvious. Destroyed boats lined the shores, and others were now moored in various locations throughout the lagoon, docks that obviously once existed were still waiting the be restored. Surprisingly when we passed through the lagoon onto the French side, the condition worsened still. We found boats still turned upside down from the storm and beaches were still lined with debris. Although I am sure there has been vast improvements from the original state of the island after Irma, the mass toll the storm had on the island surrounded us.

Despite the destruction to the island, their was obvious beauty that remained and cannot go unspoken. The motto of the island is “the friendly island” and that is not something anyone on St Maarten/Martin takes lightly. We had countless experiences of the friendliness of the island, but one of our favorites was taking the bus.

Taking the Bus

As we spent many weeks on the island, we started to use the local buses at the reasonable cost of $2/person/trip, it was much more affordable than taxi’s that were four times the price. Buses were large vans that could seat anywhere between 12 and 20 people, or so we thought. The first thing you notice when boarding the bus is its customary to say “good afternoon” at which point other riders politely nod and respond, “good afternoon”. The next important thing to note about the bus is there is no fancy button to push or cord to pull when you want to exit the bus, you simply yell out “stop” to indicate to the driver that you would like to get off. At which point the driver will find the next safe looking place to stop the bus, pull over and let you off on the side of the road. No need to wait for a bus stop, you can get on and off, anywhere you want along the route. Then comes the question “how many people can you fit on the bus”, this is a fun game that always surprised us. Just when you think every seat is taken including the two seats upfront with the driver and one more person could not fit on the bus, the next rider to enter unfolds a seat from the side of the isle now riders start filling the isle of the bus. With this arrangement if someone at the back of the bus wants off they must ask everyone in the isle seats to get off the bus, which they all did happily and then pilled back on before the bus drove off again. There was never a dull moment on the bus.

From Haul out to Splash Down

Just over a week ago we had our first haul out experience. As I had explained in the previous blog post, we needed a new engine and decided to use the time on the hard (on land) to do some other work on the boat. It started on Tuesday when they used a crane to haul out our boat and delicately place it on stands on the land. Next we fastened a ladder to our back step and that was our new way on and off the boat. I likened the experience of living on a boat that’s on land to living in a tree house, every kids dream come true, big and small. Although there was a lot of hard work of replacing through hulls and waxing the hull of the boat, we still enjoyed our time in the boat yard. The people at Time Out Boat Yard (TOBY) were very good to us, going out of there way to help us even when we didn’t realize we needed to pre-book the crane to lift the engine in/out of the engine locker, they dropped what they were doing to make arrangements for us. I think the kids enjoyed being able to run around on ground for a while, without having to dinghy somewhere first. However the best part and the part we will miss the most were the dogs. We all got some much needed fur love from the lovely dogs of the boat yard, from Bonnie the boisterous pup, to Rosie running around our boat to bark at the passing dinghies, to Jack the old boy who liked to howl at the planes passing overhead. We were very happy and appreciative to everyone who helped get our boat into ship shape for a successful splash down last Wednesday, when we returned our boat back to the seas.

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We’re Moving On

We are now moving on with the intention of going to Guadeloupe to meet our first guests on SeaSparrow, the Plourde family. We anchored off Nevis Saturday night, and Sunday we sailed to beautiful Montserrat. We look forward to spending a couple of days in Montserrat exploring the island while the weather improves for the last part of our trip to Guadeloupe. We will miss everyone we met in St Maarten/Martin, all the friendly faces and helpful people, and of course Hugh will miss being jet blasted at Maho beach. 

A few memories of St Maarten/Martin:

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