Helen: Today is Tuesday - it's a good thing I couldn't get to a computer earlier than this as this blog post would've been really irate and ranty on Sunday...but now we have our passports back and the world is a better place. Let me explain...

They call St Martin 'The Friendly Island' which is like calling Alcatraz 'a charming seaside resort' in as much as it's a complete lie. We arrived in Sint Maarten airport on Sunday morning, having been delayed AGAIN by LIAT (called 'Late If AT all' by some of the other travellers we've met). We were supposed to arrive on Saturday night, but spent all of Saturday afternoon waiting in St Lucia airport for our plane to materialise - this is a particularly gauling thing to do as just outside the departure lounge there is a gorgeous white sand/turquoise blue sea beach - at least if we'd been allowed to wait out there we could've got away from all the whinging Brits who were also waiting for the plane. It starts its journey in Trinidad and then stops at Grenada and St Vincent before getting to St Lucia and continuing to Antigua. Well, this time, it stopped in Grenada. For good. So, LIAT sent us on a later flight to Antigua and then put us up in a hotel there over night to get a connection to St Martin on Sunday morning. I thought the hotel was actually quite good...but all the other 'distressed' passengers were complaining - felt like telling them that was the last hot, presurized shower we were likely to get for a few months so they should consider themselves lucky.

So, having got only 4 hours sleep (we arrived at 23.30, but couldln't go to sleep for at least half an hour as there was cable TV in the room which is a bit of a luxury for us sea gypsies - then we had to be up at 4 for a 6am flight) we finally arrived in Sint Maarten at some ungodly early hour on Sunday morning only to be met by the most unfriendly Immigration officer in the world. We didn't have a letter from our next skippers to say that we'd be joining their boat, so she took our passports and gave us 3 days to come back with an appropriate letter. When C pointed out that it's illegal for her to keep our passports she told us it was illegal to enter St M without evidence of onward and that if we didn't want her to keep our passports that was fine, but we'd have to get back on the plane. Ah. OK. She won. But, as C pointed out when we were safely out of earshot, this is a daft protocol - when you enter their country illegally, the one thing they want you to do is leave, which is the one thing you can't do without a passport. Anyway, we went back to the airport today with as many documents and pieces of paper as we could muster and asked very politely if, possibly, maybe we might, please, be allowed to have our passports back so that we could leave their god-awful inhospitable country. (They nearly said no, we'd have to come back another day as the Immigration Officer who'd been on duty on Sunday wasn't on duty today so couldn't stamp our passports. Honestly, if they were going to bend the rules and back date the stamp in our passports, couldn't they bend them some more and get someone else to stamp the damn things? As it turned out there was someone on duty today who was also on on Sunday so the passports were dutifully stamped and we went on our way.)

We haven't managed a huge amount since we got here - although we have participated in the island's main pass-time - shopping! We both got new duty free sunglasses and C got a watch (unfortunately, it's not like the other islands where if you have ship's papers you get a discount on the price on the ticket - in St Martin there just isn't any tax at all, so the price you see is the price you pay. So, not as cheap as we were hoping, but still, cheaper than home.) We have been to Marigot though, on the French side of the island (one side is French, and the other is Dutch). V strange as it's just like being in France - we had lunch in a cafe with tables on the pavement and half a bottle of red wine and a cockerl just strutting around by our feet. C has been practising his best French - haven't had any embarrassing misunderstandings yet.

Our new boat is great - she's called Nooka after a character in Noggin the Nog :) - and the couple who own her are also lovely - Hannah and Matt - turns out they're both from Oxford and we have several friends in common! The boat is brand new so not only is everything v clean, it all works!! What a wonderful experience :) We've also had a briefing on how stuff works and have been promised a safety briefing when we set off in earnest tomorrow. Yesterday we moved the boat from Phillipsburg to Simpson Bay Lagoon, but that only took half an hour, and we motored (as the boat doesn't have a boom just now) so that doesn't really count. This lagoon is crazy - it's full to bursting of gin palaces and superyachts all trying to out do each other - think it costs upwards of $50k per week to hire those sorts of boats. Bonkers. Especially as there's bugger all to do here if you don't like beaches. (C and I decided we ought to start playing 'Caribbean Island bingo' - we tried it with tourist attraction gift shops in the UK and it was great - you have to come up with a list of 5 things you think you're going to find somewhere and then you get points if you see them. So far, I have: 17th century fort on a hill, minibuses as public buses and cruise ships (extra points if they are Ocean Village 2 or Windsurf). C has: Rastas offering him weed and people trying to rip him off. Hope I win bingo as I think C is currently winning Horse.

Right, think that's plenty enough from me. Won't be any posts for a few more days I'm afraid as we're off sailing tomorrow - heading to Bonaire, just off the Venezulan coast. Might even try some diving there.

Hx

PS. Bob, if you want to know where we are just now, here's the GPS reading: 18 Degrees 02.024 Minutes North
63 Degrees 05.111 Minutes West (had to write it in words rather than using symbols, as this laptop was bought in Spain so the whole operating system and keyboard is in Spanish - we're navigating it better than the Swedish version Joel had last week though!)