Sailing to Marigot Bay St Martin

English Harbour and Shirley Heights behind us

We left English Harbour, Antigua at around 1600 on Friday 13 December, expecting a brisk sail up to Marigot Bay, St Martin.  It started off well enough with an east-southeasterly wind in the upper teens, scudding clouds and a few rain showers around.

Passing Falmouth Harbour

We had a good broad reach along the south coast of the island and then headed northwest but for several hours whilst we were off Antigua’s west coast we experienced remarkably light winds, frustratingly so.  In fact, it wasn’t until around 2200hrs that the wind got up above 10kts again and then an hour later we had 2 reefs in the main and a slightly reefed genoa and were roaring along!  Being just an overnight passage we worked a 3hrs on, 3hrs off watch system which meant that Nicky was available to run the OCC’s morning HF radio net.  She’s the net controller on Saturday mornings, at least until we go too far west and can’t hear/be heard by the net any more.  Hearing that we were heading for St Martin, Alastair Hill on Cranstackie warned that friends of his on the Dutch side (Sint Maarten) had told him of rioting and roadblocks on the French side.  This was later confirmed when we raised Innamorata II on the VHF radio.  Steve said that they were having problems obtaining fuel and might end up moving to the Dutch side to do so.

The island of Tintemarre (L) and the hills of St Martin beyond

The final few hours of our passage past Tintemarre and Grande Case Bay to Marigot Bay provided good sailing conditions with bright sunshine and just the odd shower.  We rounded the headland into Marigot Bay at about 1030, noting that the anchorage seemed pretty full for a place where the locals were rioting, and found a suitably BV-sized space conveniently close to Innamorata II.

Anchored in Marigot Bay

With our anchor down, Steve and Carol brought us up to speed on the situation.  The riots had started a couple of days previously, a protest against the slow speed of recovery following the hurricanes of 2017 and, specifically, about the lack of potable water in most of the poorer areas of town (despite the population having to pay full water rates).  The bridge over the entrance into the lagoon had been blockaded and on the Thursday some of the rioters had thrown bricks and stones at dinghies passing under the bridge.  Very quickly this had been seen to be a counter-productive move and it was now safe again to travel by dinghy into the lagoon but the town was still quiet, with shops opening in the morning and closing early before any unrest started up once more.  Innamorata II, along with Wild Iris and Endless Summer had been in the anchorage for the best part of a month and, with all their boat chores now complete, planned to head over to the BVIs overnight Sunday into Monday.

Armed with this information and the knowledge that the Ile Marine chandlery was open (Steve and Carol had managed to get diesel there that morning) we headed there to check in.  We arrived just after the store had shut for the day, 5 hours early due to security concerns, but the owner/manager was still there and was happy enough to let us in to complete the formalities.  Check-in on the French islands is a remarkably painless experience, though using a French computer keyboard takes some getting used to, and within 15min we were formally stamped in and looking forward to buying some decent French bread and nice cheese, riots and shop closures permitting, of course!

Marigot Bay, St Martin