Day Fourteen

Since we had skipped Gustavia we never actually checked into St. Barts. This was not necessarily completely legal but we left pretty early the next morning so it's not clear we were ever in St. Barts when the customs office was open.

Tracy was, in fact, ready to go at about 7am – she knew we were planning to go to Orient Beach on St. Martin and it is one of her favorite beaches. However, most of the rest of the boat wanted to snorkel so we stayed at Anse de Columbia for a few hours. We finally left late in the morning for the short sail over to St. Martin. About halfway across we got hit by a squall line. The wind kicked up and our speed peaked briefly at over 10 knots (our record for the trip). We cleared into St. Martin at Orient Pond (Moorings headquarters). The Mooring's refilled our fuel tanks but their water lines at the gas dock were broken so we could not take on water.

We then motored around St. Martin and dropped anchor at Orient Beach behind Green Cay. It was very shallow – the depth gauge showed less than a foot of water below the keel (we checked by snorkel and verified that we had about 2 feet). There was a lot of current so it was not a great place for swimming.

We took the dinghy in to the beach – which was a little exciting due to the surf. There was too much surf to pull the dingy onto the beach so Jimi tied it to a mooring and swam back to the beach. We had rum punch in the beach chairs that line the beach and did a little shopping. It was very relaxing.

We wanted to avoid bringing the dingy back through the surf but most of the shore party didn't think much of the idea of swimming out the mooring (and we some clothes and other items that we didn't want to get soaked). We finally decided to bring the dingy in at the far end of the beach where there was much less swell because of the offshore islands. This required walking past the 'clothing optional' part of the beach. Jimi, Kaylynn and Pamela swam out to the dinghy and rode down, while the rest of the crew walked down the beach.

Once we got back to the boat we moved across the harbor and re-anchored behind Isle Pinel. This gave us somewhat deeper water and less swell. It was an improvement but still rougher than most anchorages.