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Feb 1st - Arrived in Marigot Bay at 2pm after a 22 hour sail from Tortola, BVI. Marigot is the capital of the French side of the island, so we hoisted the French courtesy flag. The island is half French and half Dutch, hence the two names, for two separate countries.
Marigot Bay is like a postcard, with clear azure water, and the sandy bottom easy to see 5 meters below us. The town is like being back in France, with restaurants lining the streets and the aroma of coffee and croissants in the air. The next day we had breakfast French-style, at a cafe, sitting at a table drinking coffee and eating pastries, as we watch the world go by!
Live lobsters at a seafood restaurant on the street!
Fort Louis - 
Feb 3rd - Raised anchor in Marigot and sailed round to the Dutch side, to Simpson Bay Lagoon. Put up the Dutch courtesy flag, and went through the bridge to the lagoon.
Feb 4th - Mar 5th - So much for getting a move on! We're still in Simpson Bay Lagoon, and have met some fantastic people here, mostly from hanging out at Simpson Bay yacht club. It seems at last we've met the cruising community that we've been hoping to find, and it's been great sharing stories and tales of what everyone's been up to. This is certainly the longest we've stayed in one place, over a month, but it's a great place to get jobs done because it's a center for cruisers, so there's a store for everything, and it's duty free so it's cheaper, plus everybody here are live aboard cruisers, all doing the same thing we are, so it's hard to leave! There have been some great nights on people's boats, and afternoons playing Dominoes at the Yacht Club on a Sunday, (where we met most of our friends).
Another photo of a sunset!! 
The lagoon taken from the bus to town!
Mike and Deirdre from Cheshire Cat. This is them leaving the lagoon, the first
of the group of friends to finally get the energy to leave!!
Had all our friends over for a BBQ. A bit of a squeeze, but a fun night!
Brenda and John from "Willow" as they leave for their adventures.
Simpson Bay Lagoon has a really deep draught, so it's also an anchorage for HUGE super yachts. We we're lucky with finding a place to anchor, as it turns out we're right by the yacht club, the crew hang out, the Soggy Dollar Bar, and the dock where all the super yachts moor up! So our view is obscured slightly by the the 150ft masts, but we do get to watch them arrive and anchor, a sight to see when it involves boats nearly 3 times as big as us! There's also one of the biggest motor boats here, "Limitless", with an overall length of 356ft, the owner actually paid to have the bridge widened so that he could get in here!
Mirabella III, a 136ft super yacht. Her deckhand Lizzy, and Ian the 1st Mate
both come from Fowey in Cornwall! A gorgeous boat, we got to look around and
were blown away. We couldn't really miss them since they anchored about 10ft
from our stern when they moored up. So we always knew when they arrived because
Gallant would literally vibrate when they dropped their anchor and used their
bowthrusters!
One of the events in the lagoon is at the yacht club. It's positioned right next to the bridge that's the entrance to the lagoon. Every Sunday they have a happy hour with $1 beers, and everyone comes to watch the arrival and departure of all the super yachts, as well as the regular Joe cruisers. And for every boat that comes in we give them a welcome of whooping and yelling, and if we're lucky we get a wave from the skipper!
Another thing that we tried out was a visit to the Sunset Beach Bar on a Sunday. It's positioned at the end of the main runway for the airport, and around 3pm the Air France 747 arrives. The plane lands about 200 yards from the bar, and on it's way down it's so loud you have plug your ears, and creates so much wind from the jets, that the sand on the beach is blasted on to any tourist who happens to be sunbathing! Then at 5pm there's another Air France aeroplane that takes off. It taxies around the runway until it's jets are faced directly at the beach, and the plane is ready to go. It starts up it's engines and the jet wash it creates blows more sand off the beach, but what everyone does is hang on to the wire mesh fence at the end of the runway and you get blasted by the jet engines, almost sending you flying! The sound is horrific and its hot too, then suddenly it ends and you look up and the plane is flying away! A well located bar to say the least! We were meeting friends there, and it just so happened that they both were walking across the beach as a plane landed, nearly blowing them into the sea!
The Sunset Beach Bar
The beach with the warning signs!
Everyone posing for the camera! 
Hanging on to the fence!!
In the foreground there's 2 guys getting sand blasted, and if you look in the
background you can see everyone hanging on to the fence!
Mar 6th - 9th - The Heineken Regatta. A long weekend of sailing and parties, with the Simpson Bay yacht club as the headquarters. We we're planning to leave just before but figured we'd couldn't miss out! Here are some photos of Mike from "Cheshire Cat" and Andrea dancing on the bar!
Deirdre and Steve posing with their Heinekens!
Mar 11th - Our new sails from Doyle arrived! Sadly both were plain white, we were hoping for fluorescent pink!
Putting up the new Genoa, Dalton from Quietly helped us out.
Mar 13th - Tanked up on fuel, filled up with water and left the lagoon at 11am to go back to Marigot. "Quietly" sailed with us, so we got a photos of each other under sail.
The best of the bunch! If you look closely you can see Gallant.
We got some great photos of Quietly because we arrived earlier, so we snapped
these as they were coming into the anchorage in Marigot.
Mar 16th - Finally we leave St Martin! We're heading to Saba, a tiny island SSE of St Martin. We were going to sail it with "Quietly" but their main halyard broke yesterday, so we're going to meet them along the way somewhere instead. So off we go!!
