St Maarten

Today we were gong to do the Americas Cup sailing but before the party last night we changed our mind because it fell right in the middle of the day and there was a few other things we wanted to do while here, and now in retrospect there is no way we would have been able to help sail a 40ft racing monohull in the state we were in.
After showering and packing our stuff for the day we stepped outside to be greeted by 3 other cruse ships sharing the dock with us, our ship was tiny in comparison, one of the ships was a Royal Caribbean Eagle Class Cruiser, in 2003 it held the crown for the biggest cruise ship in the world. I saw a documentary on the design and construction of these behemoths, cinemas, pools, Restaurants, ice rink, dance clubs, casinos, shopping mall, climbing wall, mini golf, artificial surfing waves, theatre, spas, gyms, you name it the ship had it! Google it and you will see what I mean!

We missioned around town and caught a taxi to the Sunset Bar. The Sunset bar is world famous, not for the actual facilities, (which are rather nice, kind of like La Med) but for the fact that it is on a beach that is 2m away from the Princess Juliana International Airport main runway! The planes land and take off right in front of you, and let me tell you an Airbus A340 on line up for take off with full brakes and full throttle is f&%king loud! The jet blast is indescribable and it HURTS! 4 Turbofan jet engines each with 30000 pounds of thrust 40m away from you is an experience to behold! It is impossible to stand up, when the pilot powered up I saw a dude who was intentionally standing behind the plane get blown over like he was hit by a train, the cars don’t even drive past when a plane is powering up for take off, what an idiot, but it was really funny! We were off to the edge of the runway and we still got sandblasted!

Just as cool is having a Boeing land over your head so close you have a reflex to run away as it is on final approach and it gets closer and closer to you, the beach and the run way a few meters behind you! It feels like you could jump up and touch it!
What an awesome experience it was to be there! For some of the time we sat on the deck and had lunch of hamburgers and coke, (no alcohol yet!) while planes of various makes and sizes were coming and going.
There are some filthy rich people here we saw mega yachts in the marina and private jets at the airport that would make Mark Suttleworth feel like a street beggar! Foreplay, the biggest motor yacht we saw at the Cape Town boat show is the same as the smallest yacht we have seen here! I saw a Boeing 737 – 200 private jet, SAA use those for the CT-JHB domestic flights!
After the sun had set we took a walk up the main shopping street of Cole Bay and were humbled again, this time by the jewellery, the only thing we saw with a price tag was a R100 000 necklace, no problem!! And it wasn’t even one of the fancy ones in the window! No cubic zirconium here!
With our tails between our legs we caught a local bus back to the capital, Philipsburg, to explore the boardwalk and beachfront. St Maarten is tiny, 47 sq miles in total so it sounds like a long way but really it isn’t!
The boardwalk was mainly closed up because it was after dinner and all the other ships had left, but it was still cool, white sandy beach on one side and high-end shops, bars and restaurants on the other. We found a place that had WiFi so we sat down for a drink, Richard had recovered somewhat and decided he was brave enough to try a beer, so we ordered two draught Heinekens, which much to our surprise went down rather well! We could not get the Internet to work so we packed the laptop away and enjoyed our beer and the jazz band that were playing on the other side of the boardwalk. One beer was all it took for poor Rich and he was pissed again, I was also feeling rather touched as we walked back toward the ship. We had dinner in the Deck 4 restaurant called Fusion4, this is where we normally eat if we eat onboard, shortly afterwards we decided to retire for an early night instead of having another hangover in the morning!

We leave St Maarten tomorrow at 7am so we have set the alarm to wake up and watch us sail out, the trip to St Barths tomorrow will take about 45mins so we will hangout on deck while we are underway and while we drop anchor when we arrive. I’m sure we will be tendering in St Barths again as I could not see a Cruise Terminal on the map. Apparently St Barths Main Street is comparable to New York 5th Avenue shopping so no doubt it will be another humbling experience for us!

Cheers till next time!