Sailing to France, Splashing Heaven's Door, and Packing a Box of Eggs

Location: the apartment next to Lagoonies, Sint Maarten

This time, I really need to keep this post short, because I only have an hour to write it. Of course, this is entirely my fault; I could have written it two days ago when I had an entire half day free, but I chose to watch four hours of TV instead. In my defense, the show was "Below Deck," which is a reality TV show about people working on a megayacht, so it was somewhat on-theme. Too dramatic, though; if it weren't filmed, half the crew would probably be fired by now.

Heaven's Door is back in the water! The fiberglass work is done, the windows and hatches have been re-sealed, the engines have been replaced, Jem's nerved have been fried, the deck has been cleaned, and she looks absolutely beautiful! Of course, the engines had a few more problems, the replacement winches haven't arrived, and half of the ceiling is on the couch (they needed to access underneath), but she's doing great.

Yesterday, as I turned the water on in the boat, there was a strange vibrating sound coming from one of the walls. Everyone freaked out. It sounded like either water or an engine, but it kept going even after the power and the water had been turned off. No one knew what to do. The engine mechanic was cursing. Jem's nerves were being rattled like never before. But it turned out to be okay. Several hours later, we found out that the noise was caused by an electric toothbrush.

I had another sail with Karl and Kara. This time, we decided to go to the French side of the lagoon. After an excruciatingly slow slog through the shifty winds of the anchorage in the middle of the Dutch side, we reached the bridge that approximately marks the border. The great thing about Laser Picos is that their masts are so stubby that they fit under the bridge with room to spare. The bad thing about Laser Picos is that if you don't get a (figurative) running start, they don't have enough speed to counteract the current that flows under the bridge. I may have hit a few piles.

We'd been on the island for a month now and still hadn't been to Maho beach, so Anna, Fly's brother, Casper, and I decided to go one afternoon. Anna wanted to get some extra exercise in, so she and Casper walked 20 minutes to get to the other side of the lagoon. I motored across. From there, we walked across town to get to Simpson Bay beach, then walked all the way to the end of Simpson Bay beach, then walked up some stairs, through a residential district, down past the airport, and finally arrived. Maho beach is approximately a fifth of the size of Simpson Bay beach but the waters are a beautiful turquoise similar to the colour in the San Blas islands. Also, the planes were pretty cool.

Nowhere Special is a small bar between the side of the road and the lagoon that occasionally has live music. We went there to celebrate the birthday of one of the members of our friend group. The musicians were a colourful bunch. The first lead singer had bright white, pointy shoes and liked to do a marching dance whenever he wasn't singing, and the second lead singer tried to flirt with a bunch of women in between songs, but still while speaking into the microphone. Also, at some point, two people from the US who wore all black with ripped skinny jeans were invited up to play bass and drums. They played Bob Marley. Also, Bryce is back from Antigua! We were supposed to go diving with him tomorrow, but we had to cancel due to the fact that we ourselves are flying to Antigua on Monday.

Yep, you heard that right, folks. Anna and I are flying to Antigua. We only found this out yesterday. Anna has found a 110-foot sailboat going to England that is currently there, and I will be joining Ananda and sailing up to Newport in a few weeks! We are both very excited. After days of not replying, Anna's captain asked her to fly in as soon as possible. Flora very kindly offered Anna and I to stay at the villa that the Ananda crew had rented (the boat is being hauled out) and so we booked plane tickets for Monday evening and started a mad three-day rush to get everything done. We had too many things to pack for a delivery boat so we each packed a box to send home. Anna has a soft drink box, I have an eggs box, to fit my snorkel fins. (A big thank you to Lovely and Hong for giving us the boxes.)

Earlier this week, I had bought some colder-weather clothing, i.e. some long-sleeve shirts and a pair of bright fuschia leggings, which was the only colour they had, but also happens to match my ski jacket back home. We also got yet another PCR test this morning. This was celebrated with more almond-chocolate croissants. Finally, we have the task of moving from the apartment back into the boat, because even though the boat is still a construction site, the lease ends tomorrow. This moving back includes washing the entire collection of dishes on the boat, because they've been exposed to the pesticide used to kill the cockroach infestation, which, thank goodness, is now gone. I'll be doing that once I finish posting this. The next post will be written in Antigua! Ciao