St Maarten

We had our normal rough motoring down to St. Maarten.  The island is divided between St. Maarten, the Dutch side and St. Martin, French.  I elected to sign in on the Dutch side and for the first time on this trip, had to relinquish my guns to customs until we depart.  The whole reason for choosing the dutch is I thought they would have more common sense.  The only part I got right was common, no sense at all   

While we were at anchor the bay was visited by Klingons but they had their space ship converted to a yacht and since it wasn't cloaked I got a pic.  

We dinghied over to the french side for pastries & walking, then dinghied to the dutch side for boat parts & stuff and failed to get on wi-fi, except at bars or restaurants.  

We are 300 yds from the yacht club and get to watch the kids practice 3 times a week in optis and lasars, was very interesting since one boy was 2 or 3 years younger than the rest in both years and experience.  He was dead last by 100 yards and he missed the marker, turned and went back four times to get around it correctly.  There was no one around to see what he did except Sally & me, but he did not cheat, so he is our favorite (I would have only made one pass & cheated).

my main man is on the left

When Cris said we had a good window to make it to St. Kitts we crossed under the bridge, called customs to bring our guns and anchored on the outside to wait.  I went in to check out with customs and immigration and they had opened the sealed box of weapons twice ruining the box for future use.  They explained they had to make sure my guns were what I said they were!  Little minds on little people with a little power makes for a volatile scenario so I just went back to the boat.  I’m sure if I had not taken the firing pins out before they took them I wouldn’t have any ammo left.

Cris lied,  we had our usual motoring into 6 - 8 waves with 15 to 20 knots wind on the nose.  

Charlestown on mooring

just another sunset