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Diane's DiaryHi all, today is 3/17. Happy St. Paddy's Day. I'm just now getting to update my logs since my cousins left yesterday. We had a good time with them & really enjoyed having them visit. But, to get back to my logs where I left off... 2/24 Saturday I had volunteered to sell T shirts for the Saint Martin Yacht Club for the Heineken Regatta from 10-3 pm so Larry dropped me off at the club. SMYC sponsors the Heineken Regatta. Eileen, the singer from Little Gidding, & I were selling. We had a great time & got to meet a lot of interesting people. They even gave us free lunch & beers (Heineken of course!) & volunteer Tshirts. We had Great White Wonder & Little Gidding over for cocktails later that evening. We all had a good time. 2/25 Sunday We stayed on the boat all day today. Larry did boat repairs, I updated my logs & reviewed the manuscript that Great White Wonder wrote titled Running Scared. I really enjoyed reading Ken's book & hope he can get it published. Sunday always seems to be a day of rest since everything is closed. Like the US used to be so long ago when they had Blue Sky laws. All the islands seem to be this way. Everyone goes to church also. Very few businesses are open. The buses run infrequently. It truly is a family day for islanders since they work 6 days week. 2/26 Monday I went to Marigot by bus today- $2USD roundtrip. I went to the wine warehouse as we call it but it's really called Dewars & is a wholesale beverage distributor similar to what we have in the US. We have been trying all the different wines to see which ones we like. None of the bottles exceed $7 in price. Actually, the wine is pretty good! I got Larry to try the really good Brie & now he likes it!! It's about $15 a kilo which is 2.2 lbs so it's about $7 lb. We often have a lunch of cheese & fresh baguette bread. Delicious! The baguette bread must be used the same day though or it gets stale. Larry went over to Budget Marine- I know, I know, I gotta keep him out of marine stores!! He keeps spending more money! In the late afternoon we go to the SMYC to meet Great White Wonder. They are selling T shirts at the club. Ken wanted me to report how I liked his book. We had drinks at the club, and then Larry & I went to Domino's pizza for dinner. Monday is special night- a medium pizza for $5 + whatever time you order. For example, we ordered at 6:45pm so the pizza was $6.45. Not bad pizza but it doesn't come anywhere close to our local pizza parlor back home. 2/27 Tuesday I went back to Marigot to call Bridget & Ron to verify all the details of our trip. They had sent us an email to call them yesterday but we didn't receive it when I went to Marigot yesterday so I had to go back again. It cost $11 to call them for around 10 minutes! Since I was in Marigot anyway, I went back to the wine warehouse to get more wine. It's really tough bringing food back on the buses as they are just minivans with people getting on & off all the time so I can really take just 3 bags of groceries. I bring my daypack, cooler bag & ice packs, & big carryon. Even that seems very heavy at times especially as liquids are very heavy. I will definitely appreciate having a car to go shopping when we get back to the US!!!!. So, I bought some more wine, cheese & baguette. We want to stock up on wine for Bridget & Ron as we know they like wine. Also, wine is supposed to be the cheapest here than any other island. Tonight we went to the SMYC as they had a Commodore's party with free Piper Heidseck champagne & appetizers in honor of the upcoming Heineken Regatta due to start on 3/2. Naturally, all cruisers go to the free party! There were so many appetizers that we had them as dinner! Great no cooking! 2/28 Wednesday I went shopping to the Price Club & supermarket on the Dutch side. We are going to leave St. Marten right after the regatta in order to meet my cousins in Antigua so we are stocking up. The next cheapest place for groceries is Trinidad or Venezuela so we are trying to have as much stocked as we can. Then we will only have to buy fresh produce & hopefully, not too much fresh meat. Tonight the SMYC hosted a free volunteers party at Budget Marine. They were supposed to have food but only had a few appetizers that went really fast. They also ran out of Heineken beer! Hard to believe since Heineken is the main sponsor of the regatta! Oh well, we got there early & had our share of it! There were several hundred people at the party. Larry also helped a boat Ciao Moody from the UK with his sailmail (this is how we send our email messages out via our SSB directly from our boat) but they couldn't get it working. 3/1 Thursday I went swimming in the am. Carson from Mistral decides to do the regatta & Larry will crew for him. I'm happy as I know Larry really wanted to go racing. I had twisted my knee climbing on the JFK aircraft carrier & wanted to stay off it. Racing would have jarred the knee so I really didn't want to race. We have noticed that cruisers are careful- we don't want to get hurt. After March, we will have NO medical coverage except for DAN accident coverage so cruisers try not to get hurt. COBRA would have cost us $500 USD per month so we decided it was too expensive for us. Also, I've noticed we've had no colds, flu etc like we get in the winter in the US. Most cruisers seem to be very healthy & are very active. We also had complete physicals & all our shots before we left the US. We also have lots of prescriptions onboard & a complete medical kit in case we do get hurt. I volunteered to sell T shirts from 3-7pm. It was supposed to be at the beach party but they had me selling them at the SMYC as it was very busy there with all the cruisers registering for the event. I didn't even have to use my free coupons for dinner as a cruiser had ordered 45 dinners & gave us a few. I'll save my free dinner coupon for tomorrow night. The dinner wasn't very good anyway but at least it was food. Larry & I want over to the party but we didn't stay long as the event starts tomorrow & the music was too loud. The wind shifted around a lot tonight with hardly any wind at all. It's tough sleeping with no wind as the boat gets pretty hot. |