Day 167, Year 6 Dark and Stormy in Sint Maarten
Date: Saturday, April 9, 2011
Weather: Beautiful Day, Winds E 15
Latitude: 18 01.023 N
Longitude: 063 02.791 W
Location: Philipsburg, Sint Maarten

Sint Maarten is the Dutch side of French St. Martin, one island that is divided between two countries. And yesterday it was “dark and stormy” in the anchorage here in Philipsburg, but I’m not talking about the weather. When we went ashore Steve bought rum and ginger beer to make the drink called a Dark and Stormy and he convinced me to have one. No log was sent last night because the drink did me in. The real problem was that we had already had four beers at the Buddha Beach Bar while trying to reach the kids via Skype and then came home and had the Dark and Stormy before dinner. Bad idea. I think that will be my first and last rum drink in the Caribbean!

We had a good overnight passage from Antigua. We arrived here at 9:30 am and Mark went ashore to check-in. I did a huge laundry, washing all the sheets plus our clothes, and then we went to shore. There was a cruise ship so there were lots of people. This is definitely the duty-free “shop ’til you drop” location with shop after shop after shop offering everything from clothes to electronics, and liquor, at incredibly good prices. We found Golhamar’s where you can taste before you buy and ended up with a bottle of Admiral Rodney Extra Old St. Lucia Rum as well as the bottle of Gosling that we used to make the Dark and Stormies. Needless to say, I don’t want to see that bottle again.

We found a couple of places to get on the internet but everything here seems to close by 6 pm, including the internet hot spots. We sat in a little open air beach bar and used the wifi from The Candy Store. When we asked people where to go to get on the internet, they told us to go this little store and talk to Candyman. I went in and found the little shop intriguing. Candyman seems to know every detail of every type of candy. I never knew there was so much to know about candy. The shop is barely big enough to turn around in, but it was packed with people with all sorts of questions about different types of candy. And Candyman is one of those characters who is fascinating to watch in action. In addition, he gladly shares his wifi with anyone close enough to use it, so we went to the closest place to sit down which happened to be the Buddha Beach Bar. Unfortunately, we didn’t reach either Justin or Heather, but we did check our land email account. We’ll try again today to reach the kids, but we will have to find another source of wifi as we are moving to Simpson Bay to be closer to the airport. Mark’s sister Jeanie flies in this afternoon so we are preparing for another week of fun in the sun.

110409 Day 167 Sint Maarten–Philipsburg