Saint Martin

The 37-square kilometre island of Saint Martin was first inhabited by the Arawak’s (These Native Americans originally came from the northern part of what we now refer to as South America. They spread over a large areas during the early Middle Ages (including the Antilles, Florida and the Amazon basin. They also lived on Saint Martin until the fourteenth century) and was discovered on behalf of Spain in 1493 by Christopher Columbus. Columbus saw the island on November 11, the holy day of St. Martin of Tours, and so named the island after him. For the next 150 years, the island was passed between the Netherlands, England, France and Spain. The Ancient stone fortresses that guard much of the island’s coves are testament to the island’s turbulent past. In 1648 Saint Martin was peacefully divided between the Netherlands and France and today it is the smallest landmass in the world shared by two sovereign nations. 

Early in the morning, while everyone is still asleep, I go to the cockpit and take in Simpson Bay. I love to see how slowly everything comes to life, the sun gains strength and warmth and the water around the boat shows its different shades of blue. The places where the bottom consists only of sand has a beautiful turquoise color and the places where the bottom is covered with grass differ in color from azure blue to phantom green, depending on the depth in those places. Several turtles swim around and every now and then you see a head emerge to the surface for some air, after which it disappears into the depths again. The coast consists of large resorts with private beaches, bar/restaurants and catamarans that take tourists daily for day trips around the island. At the moment, everything still radiates calm. 

The pallets with our stuff, from the Netherlands, have arrived. It was a little shocking to see it all standing next to the boat. Are we going to fit it all on the boat? We took a deep breath, switched our minds off and started unpacking it box for box. At one point, you could only see chaos around you and sweat is running from everywhere. Many hours, sighs and moans later, only the washing machine is left. For this, the tape measure has been taken out several times to make really sure it will fit in one piece. The washing machine should not have been 1mm bigger! According to all measurements and railings that are temporarily dismantled, Jeroen and Rajesh say it will fit. They combined all their strength and lifted the washing machine from the dock to down below deck. It has all been worth it. The washing machine is in place (almost working). That cold beer afterwards was very welcome and we toast to a successful mission. With all our stuff on board it feels more definitive that we are not going back to the Netherlands for the time being and that the boat is really our “home”. 

Jeroen has his tools on board and can get back to his heart’s content as “Jeroen makes it”, with Rajesh as his right-hand man. The next week there will be a lot of work to be done before we sail on to Martinique. We have exchanged the anemometer for a different type, the washing machine will be connected, our life raft will be mounted on the deck (quite exciting to drill and screw right through your roof!) and another gas stove with oven. These are all points for improvements of the boat, which makes life on board more pleasant and safer and above all, that we are really self-sufficient and we can do without the mainland and/or shops for a longer period of time. 

(more photo’s from the inside of the boat in the my motu page)

We try to alternate the days of jobs with fun trips. We rented a car for a day and drove around the island (at the end of the day, don’t laugh now, we enjoyed doing our shopping at a Carrefour supermarket! If you have ever been to such supermarket in France, you will understand our euphoria. Even peanut butter from Calvé was there! Give me two J), we swam, snorkelled, met up with friends and partied into the early hours. We will try to sail on to Martinique this week. Probably on Wednesday and if that doesn’t work out it will be Saturday. (we don’t want to check into a country in Saturday or Sunday, because it is possible that immigration is closed and/or they charge you a lot extra for it.) It will be a 2,5-day sail to Martinique.