Lynn and Joel 's visit

Today is Jan. 16 and Joel and Lynn have left St. Maarten for home, we had a wonderful 10 days, a lot of laughs and very good scrabble games; I am pretty sure in the end the girls beat the boys!!!!

But let me first tell about our trip from St. Thomas to Virgin Gorda, BVI. We had a wonderful sail trip, one of the nicest of our whole journey and anchored off the Bitter End Yacht Club where we had a fantastic dinner. The day after, we left at 14:00 h for St. Martin. We had the wind on the nose so we had to motor sail and tack all the 80 miles. 

After about 8 hours the reef line got caught in the wind generator propeller and when we made a tack it ripped the post off the arch. After tying it to the arch we could continue our nightly sail but a few hours later we had an alarm on the port engine. We switched the motor off and sailed with only the stb engine until the motor had cooled off. After starting the port engine the alarm went off immediately again so we continued with only one engine running. When it became light we could see that a line was caught in the propeller.

To make sure everything comes in 3’s a block of the head sail broke; it was so wild that Jacques had to attach himself with a life line to go to the front of the boat and change the broken part. After 24 hours we dropped the anchor in Marigot Bay and were very, very happy we arrived safely. (Always nice to be able to say this).

Joel tried and tried to get the line free from the propeller, but he could not stay long enough under water without the use of air. A day later we hired a diver to free the line, Jacques found a welder to repair the wind generator post and the following day, when Lynn and Joel went for a dive trip, Jacques (and Ria!!) installed the generator again. We were back in business.

The next day we sailed around the island and anchored in Great Bay on the Dutch side to visit Philipsburg, the capital of the Dutch part of the island. This a typical cruise ship harbor, LOTS of jewelry, watches etc. stores and after the cruise ships left it was awfully quiet. We were anchored in the middle of the harbor and became the goal and turning point for all the water scooters, nice for them, less interesting for us.

I will soon talk about our last days in St. Maarten. A lot of hello’s and good feelings, Ria