Our Grand Adventure

1st January 2026 | Odometer: 703nm | Sint Maarten / Saint Martin

To get to Saint Martin in daylight, we needed to get up quite early to leave the St Kitts anchorage. We woke up at 4am and kicked off in the darkness before dawn. In a completely moonless sky, the black surroundings were very hard to see. I stood on the bow with a torch and whenever I spotted something in the water would briefly illuminate it to point it out for Ryan.

We both got a bit of a surprise when we were heading out the anchorage and I was like, wait wasn’t there three boats behind us last night? Then quickly had a look around with the torch and one of the yachts was coming up right in front of us with no lights on and no anchor light! Completely unseen in the darkness. We steered clear of that! 

The sunrise coming up was stunning as the predawn light started to spill over the waves. Slowly the visibility improved and the colours of the sky were really pretty. Now that the sun was up we could relax a bit and enjoyed a really calm crossing. The wind and waves were negligible and we took it in turns napping. 

As we travelled we were sticky-beaking on the ridiculous number of super yachts at St Bartholomew island or were on the way there. The island is known for putting on the most spectacular fireworks display on New Years Eve and is generally packed with superyachts. Apparently the superyacht watching is just as good as the fireworks display. We decided to steer clear of that as for the rest of us normal folks needing to pay $1000 USD for a dinner reservation is a touch out of reach!

So onwards we went to St Martin – an interesting island that is half French and half Dutch! When you are on a boat you need to check the boat in and out of each country, but on land you can just walk around between the two with no issue. Initially we had planned to head to the northern French side of the island, but with a northerly swell coming in we changed plans at the last minute to the southern Dutch side of the island. We pulled into Simpson Bay and were both super tired from the crossing over. 

What a shock Simpson Bay was after the quiet of Antigua, and St Kitts and Nevis! There were hundreds of boats, loads of super yachts, aeroplanes taking off from the runway literally alongside the beach, helicopters, jetskis and power boats ripping around everywhere and people, people, people! There is also a massive lifting bridge that all sorts of boats use to enter the giant lagoon behind the bay and the line to go in or come out is long and busy. It was so hectic and loud and the wake from the big boats getting around was intense! We were getting rolled about a bit but we were too tired to shift around to another spot so we decided to just go with it for a night. 

We got a bit unlucky with the timing as the airport was insanely busy. Think private jet or jumbo jet taking off or landing every 2 minutes; with helicopters zooming in and out between. After checking on google maps, we were about 200 meters away from the runway and it was loud! The air traffic was particularly high as loads of folks were flying in, then helicoptering over to St Barts for the fireworks on NYE. If you ever stay in St Martin do not stay on the strip between the airport and beach – yeesh! So loud!

Stepping Back in Time

Checking into the dutch side was an excellent example of how not to run a customs & immigration office. What an absolute shambles. 20 people squished into a tiny room. You need to line up to get the paperwork, which you fill out by hand, then line up again to submit the paperwork. There is no room to line up, no signage and everyone just generally borrowing pens and filling out forms on chair backs etc. Meanwhile, in the chaotic wait, not one, but two separate skippers had heated arguments with the immigration office who had lost their paperwork and were now not allowing them to leave… my goodness.

When it got to my turn, the officer behind the window was engaging in a yelling match at her colleague about who had lost the papers… apparently quite a few had been lost. Greeaaatt. In between yelling at her colleague she successfully yelled at me also a bunch for everything, but in the end I got through and was checked in. I hightailed it out of there more than a bit frazzled after that!

Meanwhile, at the dinghy dock, Ryan had elected to stay with the dinghy and keep an eye on it because the dock was crazy! The dock is supposedly for dinghies for checking in and out of customs & immigration only, and yet, a massive catamaran was tied off on it and there was a big queue of people waiting to board what was clearly a commercial day charter. The catamaran took up so much room there was only one cleat and a tiny corner of the dock left for all the people trying to get through immigration – right next to the rocks… fantastic. Ryan counted 8 dinghies tied off on the one cleat with people climbing over and across multiple other dinghies to get to the shore. Absolute chaos all round. This dock is also the main garbage drop off point in the bay so there is a lot of people coming and going! Eventually the cat left which calmed it all down quite a bit. Ryan dutifully took the black bag out of our dinghy and tossed it in the trash while he waited.

Now that we were both well and truly frazzled we were ready to just sit and chill for a bit. We bobbed around to the Antigua Yacht Club for breakfast. This place is so entertaining! You sit on a lovely wooden patio facing the lagoon, and are right next to the lifting bridge. This bridge spans what feels like a tiny gap, and it opens on a schedule for boats to go in and out. Watching the various superyachts, powerboats, charterboats, liveaboards and every other type of boat line up and jockey around holding position in the lagoon is quite interesting. Then when they get going the boats push through surprisingly fast right past the little verandah you are sitting on! Absolutely entertaining and the crowd in the restaurant gets a fantastic show. 

Bedsheet Brouhaha

I had had a weird niggly feeling that something was off when I had gotten back into the dinghy but I couldn’t put my finger on it. While we were enjoying our breakfast and the show, Ryan was relating his tales of the dock when he mentioned tossing the garbage in the bin. Hang on a minute, what garbage? We didn’t have any garbage? The black bag in the dinghy! 

Oh man, that was our laundry! All our sheets and towels – tossed out! Hahaha! I cracked up laughing for ages… aah what a fail! 

Ryan’s argument – why was the laundry in a black garbage bag?

My argument – because last time we did the laundry we talked about separating it into different bags, because the laundry bag was also in the boat, because the garbage bag wasn’t tied and it was soft!!!

We had a good time debating who was really at fault here hahahha. 

Anyway, after breakfast we headed back to the dock, which was much calmer, tied off, and went dumpster diving. Thankfully our bag was right on top and was easily retrieved with a bit of a climb over the pile. We did get some strange looks and laughs from the guys on a big yacht tender there; and they laughed harder when we related the tale – of course, they all took Ryan’s side haha.

Sint Maarten

St Martin was not really a “destination” for us – more of like a chore along the way because it’s known for its duty free shopping, enormous shopping malls and well stocked chandleries. We had quite the list of things we had been wanting to buy for a long time and really burned through some cash getting a lot of bits and pieces for the boat. 

Although the anchorage was really not great we decided to stay another night for easy access to the shops and various things we needed to do (e.g. waiting for our laundry, getting gas bottles refilled, buying stacks of oil for an oil change). We also finally had the chance to buy a barbeque that would work with USA gas bottles – woohoo! We have been looking for this since Grenada! 

The back streets of Sint Maarten are such a wild contrast to the waterfronts. Going just one or two blocks back to find a hardware store really highlighted how much of a glitzy facade a lot of the waterfront areas are. From the waterfront, everything feels glamorous, fancy and ultra modern. But just a couple blocks back, there is dusty, potholed streets with the generally more rundown vibe of the Caribbean that we are more used to. It’s very much a concentration of all the wealth in one area.

We met up with our boat neighbours at a bar in the lagoon famous for its $2 rum punch at happy hour. We were definitely happy after an hour! We had a bunch of fun catching up and laughing about life onboard. Given their long term sailing goals of eventually making it to Australia; there is hope our paths will cross again one day!

The next day was the absolute worst, the anchorage was really rough and the boat felt like it was underway. We were both massively hungover and could barely contemplate breathing let alone moving the boat. Being hungover while being rolled about constantly is a true form of torture I think. We staggered ashore to the yacht club where we perched ourselves in a shady table for several hours watching the boats transit the lagoon bridgeway.

Eventually that afternoon we summonsed the energy to shift the boat to a quieter part of the bay – where we then struggled to anchor haha. Here is our three different attempts to get it done. 

Saint Martin

It was time to get the heck out of the Dutch side as the wind and waves had finally switched around and we could go to the French side. After saying I despised the Dutch Simpson Bay within 1 hour of being there; for various reasons, we had ended up being there for several nights. Sint Maarten is a busy party vibe and busy shopping precinct – if you want anything else, I recommend the French side.

We checked out (thankfully they hadn’t lost our paperwork), fare welled our new friends, made the short leg around, picked up some water, and settled in to enjoy New Years Eve. This is the enthusiasm of the Port Authority check out…

Well, we wanted to settle in to enjoy New Years Eve but, after some errands of course! Ditching the rubbish and doing a massive restock at the local SuperU. The French side feels like stepping back into the Caribbean we know and are used to! Way less of a fancy facade but also far more casual and friendly, and yet in other ways, the French side felt truly futuristic with an online check in process haha.

New Years Eve was very quiet, we watched the distant firework show and took it super easy. We spent a bit of time reflecting on our trip so far. We had now transited the boat through 10 different check ins; with December being a whirlwind of 7 different places! No surprise I was tired of dealing with Customs and Immigration haha! We were definitely looking forward to taking it a little slower through the coming countries!

New Years Day we were pleasantly surprised with a festival in the main square and a whole fireworks show right in the bay! Beautiful!