Marigot Bay,
St. Martin
18.04.288N
63.05.753W

We were up by 4:30 am and the mooring lines were dropped by 5am. With Orpailleur right behind us, we cautiously made our way out of the mooring field, across the bay and through the channel. We turned right, added more throttle and maneuvered between Virgin Gorda and Necker Islands. Once clear of all reefs, we throttled up to 6 kts and programmed our autopilot to go to the waypoint previously set for Marigot Bay in St. Martin.

Just before sunrise, we noticed that the running light on our bow decided to be temperamental and quit working. We knew that it just needed to be taken apart and cleaned but as long as we made it to St. Martin before sunset, we figured that it wouldn’t be a problem.

We watched the sun rise as we passed the eastern most tip of Virgin Gorda and noticed that Orpailleur was falling behind, so we slowed our speed to keep pace with them. They point higher than we do when sailing but we motor faster than they do. At 10 am, I did a quick calculation and estimated that we wouldn’t be making landfall before nightfall.

At 1pm Dale called Land Ho. As luck would have it, St. Martin was just where the GPS said it would be but when I relayed the info to Orpailleur, Gerry said that he was wondering when we would notice the land on the horizon.

As we continued on our track, Dale and I kept watching a cloud with a flat bottom. There was something about it that kept drawing our attention. A few minutes later we saw several funnel clouds starting to form. Needless to say, we kept our eyes on that cloud for the rest of the day. Only 3 funnels ever made it to the water and none that we could tell became water spouts.

As the sun set at 6:30 we could see our destination but we still weren’t going to make it into the bay until 7:00pm and well after dark. It seems that my waypoint (taken from a guidebook on our first trip here) was way more conservative than it needed to be.

With Dale on the bow with a high powered flashlight and me steering according to the chart plotter, we made our way in and realized that we were way past where we had intended to enter and had to backtrack across the bay to where we wanted to anchor. Although we are in less than 20 feet of water, I have the feeling that when we see where we are in the morning, we’re probably going to be way farther out than where we want to be. The only boats out here are the big boys in for the Heineken Race starting the 1st of March and everyone else than entered after dark. I guess we all think the same thing: get to the nearest boat and anchor behind them in as shallow of water as you can and figure it all out in the morning light.

We had a quick dinner of grilled chicken alfredo and are making a few notes in our respective journals before hitting the hay. Gerry and Nicky are anchored slightly behind us and to our starboard quarter; its already quiet on their boat.