Back at Marigot Bay Saint Martin

Back in Marigot Bay and looking in towards the town’s ferry dock

Having left Tintemarre in the mid-afternoon we arrived back at Marigot Bay shortly before sunset on 9 January, dropping our anchor at 1645hrs.

Evening view into the Port Louis Marina from our anchor berth, with Fort Louis on the hill above

This time we found a spot a little closer in to the harbour which we hoped would provide us with good shelter from any swell during our stay.

Fort Louis in close-up

Overlooking us was Fort Louis which we still hoped to have time to visit but, as always, there were a few higher priority tasks to attend to and, specifically, some technical issues to resolve.

Not what you want to see when you pull apart the anchor windlass!

As it should be: the new motor and alloy gearbox
ready to be assembled.  Only the gears to clean up
 and put in place, a new gasket and it’ll all be ready to go

Despite the change of solenoid whilst we had been up at Ile Pinel, our anchor windlass was still more than a little sluggish and sometimes didn’t wind in at all.  The problem could not be ignored: it was time to remove the whole thing from under the deck and strip it down to see what the problem was.  I was expecting there to be an electrical issue, perhaps with the carbon brushes, but actually the alloy housing had corroded through in one place and started to let in seawater.  It was not a pretty sight inside the gearbox and the water had tracked down into the motor, hence the symptoms of there being an electrical problem. Fortunately, we had a complete electric motor and alloy gearbox housing on board in our spares, plus we had liberally coated all of the gears with grease when we last serviced the windlass, so the damage inside looked worse than it actually was.  I cleaned up the cogs (happily, thanks to liberal use of grease previously they cleaned up well), fitted them into the new housing and, with the windlass rebuilt, it seems to work perfectly again.  It’s a good result, but at some stage we will need to order some more spares.

Servicing the outboard

I also wanted to do a service on the lower leg of the outboard motor, changing the gearbox oil and fitting a new impeller for the cooling water system.  To be honest, we hadn’t kept up to date on changing the impeller on our last outboard because it was such a fiddly job and last year the impeller in it had shredded causing that outboard motor to overheat with blocked cooling passages.  We didn’t want that to happen with our replacement outboard and so a new impeller was duly fitted.  As is often the case, the one that we removed looked to be absolutely fine, but at least we knew that it should be trouble free for another year.

Fort Louis from the dinghy dock. The ferry dock is just ahead, sans ferry in this picture

The dinghy dock on the main town quay again proved to be a regular venue for us.  Nicky made several trips to the supermarket to finish the buy in of stores whilst I ran the scuba tanks back over to the dive shop in Sint Maarten for them to be refilled.  Buying in the stores was a big part of our preparations for the next 2 months of our sailing adventure.  We are intending to sail from here, via the Turks and Caicos Islands, to Cuba and spend some time exploring the south coast of that island which, for us, is very much an unknown.  However, we understand that food availability can be an issue [Ed: more the fact that what you want is not available when you want it rather than that it cannot be obtained at all] and so, since we will be working to quite a tight timeline, we wanted to take the opportunity whilst we were in St Martin to ensure that our lockers were full of store cupboard essentials.

Looking down over Marigot

With all the work complete and BV in good order and ready to go, late on Saturday afternoon we finally made the trek [Ed:  aka‘short stroll’!] up to see Fort Louis.

Port Louis Marina and the Marigot Bay anchorage from Fort Louis.  In the mid-ground to the left of the picture you can see the lagoon anchorage on the French side of the causeway bridge

Resident iguana, one of several that we saw

There’s not a lot left of the fort, indeed one of the information signs says that the entrance was in a state of ruin in 1820, but the views from it are good.  It was originally built in the 17^thcentury to protect the islanders from the ‘wicked, marauding British’ but given that it was in such a state of disrepair so soon after the end of the Napoleonic Wars one wonders about its upkeep during those fraught times.  I’d suggest that the ‘wicked, marauding British’ might have had a hand in the ruins but this part of the island is still French [Ed: thank goodness, decent bread, wine, cheese, pâté….!]

So, after admiring the views we headed back down to BV, our final ‘task’ on St Martin now complete.  From here we’d head west, back towards Culebra in Puerto Rico and, technically at least, back to the USA.

Look at the colour of that sea – even into sun!

Marigot Bay, Saint Martin