St. Martin and St. Barth's February 2022  We backtracked north to visit St. Martin and St. Barth's.  St. Martin is divided, half of the island is French and the other is Dutch.  The water is turquoise blue and you can see the bottom in the bay.  We anchored in Philipsburg and stayed at the marina for several weeks.  During our stay, we toured the island and also got a Covid booster at a clinic.  Philipsburg has many cruise ships arriving each day(we counted 6 ships one day), and the town is built with shops for the tourists.

The island is very dry and has hills but no mountains.  We drove around the island; we especially liked the French side of the island, especially the town of Marigot which has cute shops, excellent restaurants and those boulangeries (bakeries) are soooo good!    There is an anchorage at Marigot, and there were many boats.

We drove to Orient Bay, where we had a delicious meal at Coco Bay Restaurant.  The water is stunning and the restaurant is beautiful.

We took the ferry from Philipsburg to visit St. Barth's, where we had been years ago.  It's just as I remembered; tres chic and fun to visit.  We had lunch on the water and explored the island by car.

We talked about returning to Florida to sell our boat, but decided to go south and leave our boat in Grenada for hurricane season.  Our first stop was Guadaloupe.  We left in the afternoon.  The forecast changed and we had higher wind and waves.  Our engine was overheating, so we decided to return to St. Martin for repair.  We were about 4 hours from St. Martin  near St. Barth's when our autopilot stopped working.  We had manual steering available, but it would be difficult to anchor and it was after midnight.   We took down our sails and bobbed in the wind and waves.  We put out a distress call and the Martinique Coast Guard answered and he was able to contact a tow service in St. Martin.  It took them 2 hours to arrive; Sushi was frightened with the roll and noise of the boat.  It took 3 times to get a secure tow as the line kept breaking.  We arrived in Marigot bay about 6:30 am.  We were tired, and glad to be anchored.  St. Martin is a terrific place to get repairs done and the workmanship was excellent.  It turns out the impeller on the engine failed and the weld on the steering shaft broke.  We were surprised to have two failures in the same night!

 

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