Studio Villa d'O St. Maarten/St. Martin

... our taxi driver, kindly agreed to take us to a more appropriate beach – Mullett Bay near the airport. Lovely beach with some crashing waves. A couple of heavy showers before we set off back to the boat. At last, free wi fi and I was able to upload part of this blog. Back on the boat it was the great British sail away.

Tomorrow we have an invitation to the Captain's cocktail party – dress is formal!

St. Barthelemy (or St Barths), a magical little island about 2 hours by boat from St. Maarten. Small houses, narrow streets, beautiful surrounding, baguettes, crystal clear water and great food... although it is quite pricey. As it is a French island, people speak French and it has a French touch. Many people go skinny dipping and most women are topless on the beaches.

The island had a bit ...

... We passed by Maho Beach, and unfortunately didn’t have the opportunity to see a 747 fly overhead and land. We drove through all the other small cities along the coast. Though the landscape is different from Aruba and the Dominican Republic, they all share that relaxed “island” feel.

So where will our next adventure be to and when? You’ll have to wait and see.

... about. The Tidal Wave Beach Bar is a relaxed place to have something to eat. I had some fresh mahi mahi and salmon tartare for lunch. The food is a bit pricey, but convenient. Le Galion is great for adults too. If you would like to windsurf, do some paddle boating, or even kayak, just rent from Tropical Wave.

... up bar block the view from the infinity pool. It would have made for a much better effect of the infinity pool stretching out to the horizon. But I’m not complaining, it was a wonderful time to be in St. Maarten. The Westin was not busy and going during low season made it easy to eat at various restaurants and beach bars, and the beaches were never crowded. So even having our little guy, we managed to have a relaxing vacation.

The day began lazy and continued as the only agenda to be had was to tour the new buildings of the resort and make sure that the sand on the beach was still white! This however, had nothing to do with the greatest anticipation of the day… dinner at the French restaurant, La Frѐgate. Our anticipation got to all of us and we travelled the road to the restaurant only to find that we were :45 min. early. So off ...

As the morning blushed pink at 6am all rose to bask in the glory of another day in paradise. Slowly the day unfolded with coffee on the balcony and later cereal inside. Everyone then decided to trek to the front desk to plan our week. Once that was taken care of; Cindy, Barb, and Jeff set off to the beach (showing none of the tender skin that suffered so much the first day) while Becky stayed back to get a massage in the room ...

... and everything went perfectly with the wind and our crews performance. Our boat pulled out in front and won by 3 lengths!!! Wow!!! What a ride!!!

Afterwards, we did some shopping in the stores near the dock. The stores were interesting and the variety of wares being sold was vast. After that, we boarded the ship. We couldn't stop talking about and reliving our experience aboard the Stars and Stripes. We shamelessly bragged about it to our table mates at dinner.

... just couldn't carry that far. I recognized another gentleman who was on the dock across from us in Las Palmas (in the Canaries) as we were visiting the Yamaha dealer (still no luck with our funky throttle). We caught up with his travels before we headed back home. Another day we had someone hail us from their dinghy. They wanted to know if Quest was for sale and if not, did we do charters. No to both. We ARE still open to any of you who want to visit for a bit...

... isla, y que he estado en mi vida: Orient Bay. Era una playa semi nudista, por lo que se veia mucha gente en comunion con la naturaleza. Ahi senti al famoso mar caribe abrazado por una playa como se lo merece. Un lugar hermoso!
Casualmente un tio nuestro, Oded, estaba en la isla. Dormia con nosotros en el bungalow, y fue muy bueno reencontrarse con el despues de tanto tiempo (el habia estado viajando tambien, por Canada creo). Apenas llegamos, en el primer dia de playa ...