We were very excited about our day in St. Martin today, not least because the weather has continued to be perfect this cruise. Actually, the heavy rain we had the night before we missed Princess Cays last cruise was also the last time we've had less than sunny skies.
We were also looking forward to today for another reason...new friends Chris and Dan had booked an all day excursion in St. Martin with Captain Bob, the #1 rated excursion in Phillipsburg, St. Maarten (the Dutch side of this two-flagged island). We decided to follow them to the marina, just a 15-minute or so walk from the cruise ship pier, on the outside chance there had been a cancellation and was room for one more couple.
Our 10am arrival made for an easy morning. G grabbed a quick breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet but I had coffee and my first food of the cruise (since January 4!) from the International Cafe. Really; I had not had even one snack from there...though I did pick up a glazed donut with sprinkles for G one morning when I was getting my coffee to take in to breakfast in the DaVinci Dining Room. Today I opted for one of the breakfast sandwiches I had gotten hooked on last year on the Grand Princess. While I sat there and ate, Dan and Chris and eventually G all found me. The plan had been to meet there and walk off the ship together.
Well...you know what these late arrivals (on time, but still later in the morning) do to the lines to get off the ship. It was interesting today to watch the line grow exponentially starting about 9:50am, to the point where there was no finding the end of it by the time the ship was docked and cleared just ten minutes later. Luckily, Security was there to keep people moving in the right direction and, once the line started to move, we were off the ship within a few minutes. Still, it's not my favorite way to disembark...and just wait until our 1pm arrival in Grand Turk in two days.
We walked through the developed port area and turned left onto the main road, walking toward town until we came to the small boat marina area. Unfortunately, Captain Bob was fully booked and had no cancellations today, but can accommodate us later this season. We'll wait for the trip report from Chris and Dan before deciding to make a reservation.
Suddenly finding ourselves with no major plans for the day, we considered taking a taxi to G's favorite, Maho Beach, right at the end of the Queen Juliana International Airport runway. While we were talking about that, we continued walking toward the boardwalk that fronts the wide, beautiful Great Bay Beach in Phillipsburg. Almost immediately we came upon a lady selling a boat tour to Maho Beach to watch a KLM flight arrive from the Netherlands. These 747s are the largest planes to land on St. Martin and create quite a show as they seem to be almost within reach of those people on the beach.
Instantly intrigued, we thought that the opportunity to get to the beach without having to take the long taxi ride in heavy traffic was a winner. We paid the $40pp for the trip and had a seat at a picnic table on the water in the shade of several palm trees. The boat held 8 passengers, and we were soon joined by others. Eventually, though, we started to get suspicious that we wouldn't have time to get to the beach before the flight arrived. G found a restaurant with free wifi and went online to check the latest flight arrival information and came back to tell us that the plane was landing in 25 minutes. At the same time, the lady selling the tour came back with our money, apologizing that there had been an issue with the boat and we wouldn't be able to go. Well...shoot.
I was a bit peeved. If we hadn't waited nearly an hour for the boat to leave, we could have gotten to Maho Beach by taxi. But, at that point, we just needed to salvage the day, and renting two chairs and an umbrella and getting a bucket of beers on that long, beautiful beach went a long way toward doing it. We had taken our floats with us, and swam and floated and drank beers and ordered some chips and salsa and generally had a wonderfully relaxing day within sight of the cruise ship.
The boardwalk along Great Bay Beach
G said today that he thinks this is the best beach in the Caribbean. "Even better than Carlisle Bay Beach on Barbados?" I asked. Yep, even better then that.
A funny thing happened when I was taking this photo of this church located right on the beach. I was wondering if Andy (Father Andy) would have a chance to see it...and out walked Andy! He had just stopped by to take a look and discovered there was a Mass being offered there at noon...and stayed for it.
We stayed on the beach until after 4:30pm (on board time was 5:30pm), and, in the interest of time, bought a one way ferry ride back to the ship ($5pp, but unlimited rides for the day cost $7). We had to wait quite awhile for the boat, as the Royal Caribbean ship in port with us was already leaving and so there were just a few of us left on the beach. We made a mad dash back to our cabin to clean up a bit for dinner and made it to the Michelangelo Dining Room by shortly after 5:30pm.
When Captain Forteeze made an announcement right at 6pm, we assumed it was his "welcome back on board" announcement, and it was, but then he proceeded to tell us that our starboard propulsion system was only functioning at 50% due to a software glitch (we jokingly pictured Chief Roddy sitting in front of a computer screen furiously paging through a Windows 10 User Manual) and that we'd be staying at the pier a bit longer so it could be repaired. 30 minutes later he updated us to tell us it was still being worked on, but that we had plenty of time to get to St. Thomas by tomorrow at our scheduled arrival time at 7am.
Still, there was excitement amongst the crew. St. Martin is a wonderful port to be delayed in, and I don't think that too many people- passengers and crew alike- would have been too disappointed if we had had to stay overnight there. Fortunately (or unfortunately), by 7pm Captain Forteeze announced that the issue was fixed and we'd soon be sailing.
G and I decided that sailaway from St. Martin after dark under a star filled sky was more exciting than the production show Disco: Blame it on the Boogie, and went directly from dinner to the jogging track on Deck 19 aft for a beautiful view of the lights of St. Martin as we pushed away from the pier. We stayed up there for quite a while- it was a warm, windless night- and watched as the western bays of St. Martin came into view. Finally, our day spent walking in the hot sun and playing in the water made sleep more appealing from staying up for tonight's Love Boat Disco Deck Party (but what a gorgeous night for it), and we were in the cabin by 9pm.
We are cruising at about 9mph toward St. Thomas right now, and are feeling not even the slightest bit of movement in our cabin. It will be like sleeping in a hotel room tonight, and, between the lack of wind and starry sky, makes me hopeful that our good weather luck will continue tomorrow.