10th Day of Christmas

10th Day of Christmas
One of the fun things about Saint Martin is the place names: Islands Cow & Calf, Poulets, Hen and Chicks, marina named Dock Martin, rock in the water named Witch's Tit, Bugs Hole, and Shitten Bay. This is a French/Dutch island. I wonder why the English names. Will, did I miss some?
My first impression of the traffic was on Christmas Eve, and it was unmanageable. But after that it was not so much of a problem. Other than traffic going into town in the morning, and out of town in the afternoon, it was not bad. am glad I have a car not only for the kiteboarding but to go to the market. There is a very large supermarket at the edge of town that has everything. Everything French, that is. I got so that I could handle myself in a Spanish market, but nothing in French looks familiar. I guess this is adventures in fine cuisine. Much of what I bought is a mystery, including some sort of canned vegetable stew; mixed vegetables in a thick broth, with a slight vinegar flavor. On the can may be ratatouille, or caponata d'aubergines, or tajine de legumes (I got beans for that one) cuisinee a la sicilienne. The pictures on the cans are all similar, many chopped vegetables in a bowl. It looks good and it is good.
Checking in with the French customs and immigration was a real experience. The first step is to fill out the forms on a computer terminal. That is probably a good idea, and what I did in Antigua. At Saint Martin, however, the keyboard is different than ours, with keys in different places and three characters for each of the number keys. Then to complicate things, the blanks to be filled in are identified in French, and maybe half the blanks are not identified. Each terminal has two chairs, one for the checking-in captain the other for the official who actually does the entries. When I checked out my secrete password had gotten mixed up. I tried what I had written down and it did not work. Then the official went into the data base and tried what the storage remembered and it did not work. He went around to his desk, printed something, stamped it, gave it to me and told me I was free to go.
The water in the lagoon is very shallow. Deeper channels have been dredged to the marinas and shopping districts, but even in the anchorage areas the water is only about eight feet deep. The last day there I had one chore, to clean the bottom and "refresh" the antifouling bottom paint. I have a "hookah" which is a air supply pump for working under water. It pumps air to a standard scuba mouthpiece/regulator. In shallow water, with the boat just touching the bottom, I can stand on the bottom and scrub. It makes the job much easier. But even then it is a hard job. In the process I discovered the a zinc anode had come off, so I installed a new one. I had cleaned the bottom, checked out, and was ready to depart.
Up at 00:00 and was sailing at 01:00. I had 80 miles to go, and I wanted to get there by 17:00 because it gets dark at 18:00 and I did not know where I would anchor for the night. The Anegada Passage has a reputation for being rough. I have done it before, in fact the chart I am using has two prior tracks marked, the trouble is that they are only marked in hours, not dates. My prior crossings were smooth, but the first half of this one was really uncomfortable. There were no big waves on the ocean, not even any whitecaps. But there was a chop that tossed the boat around unmercifully. It was like when a big fast boat passes in the ICW and I am not prepared for it, violently knocked side-to-side. Except in this ocean the violent knocking was in three directions. Drinking a cup of coffee was difficult because I needed that hand to hang on. But I did make it, and about 17:30 I anchored on the peaceful side of the entrance to Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda, British West Indies.
Reef Early
Bill Doar
s/v Advent II