Most of the superyachts park in the outer harbor and dinghy in (their “dinghys” are staffed by 2-3 uniformed youths, 25-30 feet long, have individual branded umbrellas for each seat, and are usually powered by twin 200 hp engines – a long way from our 10 foot, 15 hp dinghy).

This shot really doesn’t do the outer harbor justice. There are additional boats out of the shot to both the left and right, with a total of probably 25-35 total superyachts at the height of the season.

In this shot, I believe the boat the farthest out on the left-hand side is the “Christina O”. This was Aristotle Onassis’ old boat when he was married to Jacqueline Onassis (Kennedy). Winston Churchill also liked hanging out on the boat.

Our boat is not in there.

Books say it is privately owned, but I don’t think it has any real dwellings.  Next time, it might be nice to dinghy ashore and hike a bit.

A small island that makes a nice lunch stop when traveling from St. Martin to St. Barth’s.  We did just that.

One of the tasks on our new boat was to remove the old decals. The old name “Finish Line” were on both bow pontoons, the hailing port was on the stern, and the charter logo decals were on both sides of the bimini.

After a little bit of research, the recommended removal mechanism was to purchase an “eraser wheel” and use that with a power drill. The eraser wheel is literally eraser material on a wheel that you put in the chuck of your power drill. It does a fine job of removing decals without damaging the gelcoat, but does take some time. Also, power is a little hard to come by, so I used a rechargeable drill. This worked fine when standing on a firm footing, but to remove the bow decals, I needed to stand in the dinghy and press the rotating drill against the hull. Due to the movement of the dinghy and the waves, this was not a trivial exercise. In addition, the eraser would come loose from the chuck and drop. The couple of times this happened, it landed in the dinghy, but I became paranoid that it would fall in the 25 feet of water and I’d have to go diving for it. Even worse, if the drill fell in the water, the saltwater would completely destroy the drill.

I removed the decals over several days (weeks) and Sydney thought it was funny that the name “Finish Line” had turned into “ish Line”.

We anchored in Grand Case Bay on two different occasions as a respite from our time in St. Martin.  It is a decent little anchorage when there are no ocean swells, has good food, and a few supplies.

It also has a reputation for petty theft (mostly dinghys), so we were always on the look out.

We were in St. Martin for about 4 weeks, largely because our depth finder wasn’t working and I had to order one from the states.  It took at least 2 weeks over the holidays to get it flown in.  So we made the best of our long time in St. Martin.

A couple of times, we decided to go up the west coast to Grand Case.  There are decent restaurants there, minimal supplies, and some decent snorkeling at the north end of the bay.

Creole Rock is on the north end, has a tie-up for dinghys, and is good snorkeling.  It is a little exposed to the ocean, but was not too bad the days we were there.

Kirsten had made reservations with a guy on the French side to go kite boarding while we were there.  He took her out into the lagoon for an hour or so, and, by the end of the lesson she was doing very well. 

The lagoon has quite a few sunken and abandoned boats that rest on the bottom and are exposed above water that you have to avoid.  The instructor found a fairly open space where Kirsten could board and also float down-wind without running into any of the trash.

After the lesson and the foiling, we had lunch at a French restaurant at the resort where Kirsten took her lesson.  Due to COVID, there weren’t a lot of people there.  I believe we had a cheese plate with lunch because we had to show the girls the proper French lunch specials.  French cheese is always interesting.

Kirsten had a kite-boarding lesson in Simpson Bay lagoon in St. Martin for an hour or so. After the lesson, she also wanted to try out the foil-board behind a power-boat. After a couple of tries, she got up on the foil and did pretty well. Then she asked if I wanted to try so I did. Very interesting feeling – while the board is in the water it is a very familiar feeling with friction against the board. When the foil kicks in and you rise above the water, the friction goes away. You’re also *way* off the water (at least it seems that way), so it is a little unnerving.