En Panne

I’m practicing my French. If you look close on the center span of the draw bridge from the Carib Sea to Simpson Lagoon it says “En Panne, Out of Order”…  So, instead of anchoring in the lagoon, we anchored in Marigot Bay outside the bridge after a good sail from the BVIs. We weren’t really planning on making St Martin, but after 3 tacks we ended up 20 miles from St Martin and 70 miles from St Kitts. So we decided to make St Martin our next call. Got in at sunrise, cleaned the boat up a little and then headed into a very easy check-in. After the check in with port office we had to head over to immigration at the ferry dock to get our passports stamped. The immigration officer took both our passports, asked us nothing, flipped to a page early in each passport that was near full and did a quick stamp and handed them back. Apparently today was not an ink day, because we could not find any hint of a stamp in either of our passports. After passport stamping we headed to the local bakery for some fresh French treats. Then off to the Digicel phone store to get a SIMM card for our 3G modem. All very easy.
We also took a dinghy ride across the lagoon, from the French side to the Dutch side of the island, and headed over to the cruisers hangout bar, Lagoonies. We went here not for the Happy Hour but because the place to get our outboard prop repaired is in the same orange building. The guy wasn’t in, so we had to go to Lagoonies and get lunch and a Presidente beer. After lunch we found out that parts for our prop have been back-ordered for a long time but should be here by Friday --- sure, and if you believe that one…. We’ll see.
St Martin seems like it will be an interesting place to explore. Even if you have to deal with locking your dinghy every where you go, due to the rampant dinghy thefts. Further down the island chain in St Lucia there was a robbery/murder a few days ago of a British cruiser couple. We had already planned on skipping St Lucia. It ain’t all perfect in paradise.
Paul.